The secret fifth Johnny gang member who was definitely there the whole time. Thanks for reading, everybody! Please support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! If you already do, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

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[Transcript]

        As the Student Council fell back to their guard posts and patrol routes, the next tier of predators in the Detention Fortress food chain began to slowly flex the claws that they’d kept sheathed. Bullies long forgotten by the school above circled the newest arrivals, assessing who was prey and who was worthy of recruitment to the pack. 

        “...Why’s everybody looking at us like we’re fresh meat?” a worried Isaac whispered. 

        One bully had begun to lovingly craft a single perfect spitball with a concerningly involuntary stream of famished drool. Another was crafting a custom-sized locker like an undertaker carving a coffin when a drifter first rode into town in a cowboy movie.

        “They take the wounded and the elderly first,” Max muttered back. “That’s me and you, Isaac.”

        “...I’m thirteen, Max.”

        “Hoisting death flags like a pirate. You are begging for the ice floe, buddy.”

        “It’s an inauspicious number, to be certain,” Lisa agreed, giving Isaac a look of you’re-definitely-doomed pity.

        No one had attracted more attention than Johnny, however. All around the prison yard, eyes were widening and narrowing and sparkling with tears; Johnny’s presence had sent the whole flock of jailbirds soaring across the full spectrum of human emotion. Some closed their fists and shook with rage. Some cowered and whispered his name in hushed tones. Others touched old scars, or broken hearts, or blushed as they recalled long-dormant crushes. Johnny had a history here—a tale that was written more plainly on the faces of the inmates than it could have been spelled out in chalk upon the walls of the Detention Fortress.

        “Hey. Listen up, geek squad.” Johnny cast a grave glance back at Isaac and the others. “You wanna make it through the day down here? Then shut up, stick with me, and do exactly what I say.” He crossed his arms. “First thing you gotta do in detention is prove that you’re no PUSHOVER. That means you gotta stomp right up to the strongest kid in the yard and PUNCH ’EM IN THE FACE as HARD AS YOU CAN!” 

        Johnny punched himself in the face as hard as he could.

        “All right, now you guys do it,” Johnny grumbled in a daze, successfully deescalating before he could fly into a vengeful rage and start a lengthy fistfight with himself.

        “You would be so famous if they made zoos for humans,” Max said.

        “They do, Max. Look around you,” Isabel sighed. She had already punched Johnny twice, which was barely the start of her broken boss character combo.

        Johnny was spared from the rest of the flurry by a new arrival’s scoff.

        “If you’re lookin’ to slug the top dog in the yard, hoss... you’re beatin’ up the wrong tree.” A girl with a gravely voice, stickers and temporary tattoos on every inch of her freckled skin, and curly hair as bright orange as her jumpsuit stood at the fore of a legion of bullies. “That one’s been all bark since his old tricks were still a treat this whole pound begged for.”

        Everybody turned to face the swaggering delinquent who’d addressed them (except for an unimpressed Max, who looked up to the ceiling like a turkey in the rain). One of the girl’s minions knelt to offer her a stick of gum, which she took after spitting the last lifeless piece on the floor. Johnny swatted the same offer away. He had no interest in the Fortress’s formalities—the veneer of crude decorum that disguised this place’s might-makes-right reality.

        “...Juvie,” Johnny snarled. He met the girl’s familiar eyes with complicated anger.

        “The Dragon of Detention,” Juvie sneered back, addressing Johnny by a long-discarded title. Its echo rippled through the crowd behind her in a wave of awestruck whispers. “Fittin’ alias for a myth whose might is make-believe.”

        “...I never asked for that frickin’ nickname,” Johnny grumbled.

        “You never earned it neither.” Juvie took two heavy steps to stare down Johnny from within his spiky shadow. “What kind of dragon leaves its horde behind? Flies the coop it conquered with its tail between its legs?”

        “Possibly a wyvern,” Isaac helpfully suggested. “To facilitate attacks made with its stinger.”

        Isabel nobly slid between Isaac and the bullies as if he’d started reciting the periodic table of elements while juggling his lunch money.

        “I busted outta detention to set my friends free,” Johnny said. “That used to mean you, too, Juvie.”

        “Not anymore, Johnny Jabroni,” Juvie hissed back, slithering still deeper into his personal space. “I don’t want your friendship. I don’t want the so-called freedom that you DITCHED me for.” She scoffed and tapped her forehead. “Freedom to what, huh? Freedom to flunk and get lectured by teachers! A rat race to college and thousands in debt! Security cameras, endless homework, and one square meal a day you gotta pay for. Think about it, Johnny. Where exactly is the REAL prison?!”

        “Down here,” said Lisa.

        “Also down here,” agreed Isabel.

        “No, Plato’s caveman is right,” Max tonelessly chimed in. “Think of all the shadows we could puppet if we simply faced the wall and wore our dunce caps like a crown. We’d live like kings down here: locked in a dungeon at age twelve by a power-hungry widow who was born in the year 1300.”

        “...Sounds like the Dragon brought the rest of the Ren Faire with him,” Juvie scoffed, looking Max up and down with disdain. Her minions laughed on cue behind her. “Hey, Sir Pantsed-a-lot. Put your visor down before you get tilted off your high horse, you geek LARP ballboy dink.” Juvie raised a hand to slap the brim of Max’s baseball hat down over his eyes, but Johnny knocked her arm away: a perfect parry.

        “I’m the one who’s gonna get medieval if you start pickin’ on my boys, Juvie,” Johnny snarled, and the fire of his previous Detention Fortress persona flickered briefly in his eyes. “Back off.”

        “Wait I kinda think she’s cool now actually,” Max said, earning a huffy glance from Isaac for uncritically accepting that he was one of Johnny’s “boys.”

        “I don’t follow your orders anymore, Johnny. I rule the underworld now,” Juvie sneered in a sinister hiss, ignoring the irrelevant chatter from Johnny’s party members. “You’re lookin’ at the undisputed queen of the Detention Fortress, hoss.”

        “Nice of you to keep my crown warm,” Johnny said, cracking his neck, “but it’s time to take it off. I don’t want it gettin’ dented on the floor when you bow down.”

        “How like a dragon,” Juvie chuckled. “Breathin’ nothin’ but hot air.”

        Both delinquents lunged at each other simultaneously, throwing the first blows in an all-out battle for ultimate bully supremacy.

*EDIT* This week's page needs a little more time! Paranatural will update next week! Thank you for your patience!

Thanks for reading! Please, please, PLEASE support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Thank you so much in advance for your generosity!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � “WELCOME, little larvae, to the DARK DEPTHS of DETENTION!” screeched Vice Principal DuNacht. She spread her arms wide with a sound like crunching soda cans. “Welcome to the CONSEQUENCE for all your MISBEHAVIOR!”

� � � � A sea of students glowered up at her, some furious, some sullen and defeated. Johnny balled his fists, and a fire in his chest began to spread through his body, falling into his grip like a weapon.

� � � � “Whatever punishment awaits beyond this life for NAUGHTY NASTIES is lamentably far off for most of you,” hissed Devilora, looming low. “The demiurge has cruelly given children longer lifespans than the elderly. If I had MY way, it would be REVERSED!”

� � � � “You sick freak,” Johnny snarled.

� � � � “How would that, like, even work?” Max mused aloud, but no one ever joined him in disputing Bayview’s logic.

� � � � “It falls on ME, then, to create an EARLY PURGATORY for you horrid little rulebreakers. A place to sort the GNATS that can be SWATTED back in shape... from the evil, scheming SPIDERS creepy-crawling in your midst!” Vice Principal DuNacht cackled and wiggled her own arachnid fingers like a puppeteer (she could only wield a marionette in mime, most likely because she’d get burnt if she ever held a cross). “You should have listened to my warnings long ago. You’ve invited far worse than SUSPICION with your misdeeds, you blackhearted boys and girls...”

� � � � RJ took this as their cue to stop paying attention.

� � � � “Nyeh-heh HEH! Don’t you know what WITCHES do to wicked little children?!” The Vice Principal grinned, flashing sharpened teeth. “They GOBBLE THEM UP!”

� � � � Lisa flinched. For a moment, it had felt as though DuNacht had looked straight through her.

� � � � Beneath his mask, the Student Council President narrowed his eyes. Fauxbia, that horrible hag, was all but flaunting her foul-mannered alter ego. Cody grimaced. How much longer would he have to watch her get her wicked way? Once Jeff was free, he’d rip the seams out of her tattered, sneering—

� � � � No, he thought. She can make me her puppet, but she won’t make me my dad. I’m not a— Cody hesitated. I’m not that kind of monster.

� � � � He couldn’t deny, though, that his lacking heart couldn’t muster a hint of remorse at the thought of his father destroying her once and for all.

� � � � “But never fear,” sneered Devilora. “The INNOCENT, with NOTHING TO HIDE, need only come CLEAN when they’re summoned to my lair. Simply CONFESS, you pretty little liars... or I’ll extricate your DARKEST TRUTHS by FORCE!”

� � � � Isabel’s eyes went wide.�

� � � � “You guys, look!” she whispered, and pointed at a shadow swooping down from the ceiling like a bat.

� � � � The Sphinx of Truth circled DuNacht as she about-faced on the battlements. The feline spirit landed on the wall of the Detention Fortress, casting an arrogant glance in the Activity Club’s direction. Beside the Student Council President, the sickly green Sphinx of Crime clambered up into view with a clinking of chains, a Cheshire Cat whose stripes blended perfectly into the dismal prison scenery.

� � � � “Wait, that’s that widdle—er, little blue freak we all beat up,” Max said in hushed annoyance. “Perfect. Let’s make her meow the truth about that riddle of a prophecy.”

� � � � “And the spirit from the library!” a flabbergasted Isaac added. “It is another sphinx!”�

� � � � “I swear,” Isabel growled under breath, “if all this started because some nasty pack of stray cats didn’t get to snack on Isaac—”

� � � � “We’ll sadly have to throw him to the wolves,” Max lamented with a sigh.

� � � � “...Hey,” a scowling Isaac interjected.

� � � � “Sorry, no, that’s wrong of me to say. We’ll sadly have to throw you to the cats,” Max corrected himself.

� � � � “No, no, I don’t care about that. Throwing me at those jerks is a great way to start a cool combo move. I was going to ask if we think that the Student Council knows they’re getting backup from a bunch of invisible spirits.”

� � � � “...They’d need a spectral,” Isabel muttered. She glared up at DuNacht. The Vice Principal was clearly the mastermind of all this, and she had always been eerie enough to be haunted. Something in Isabel told her to trust in her hunch.

� � � � “They did try to recruit me,” Max said. “Actually that’s probably irrelevant, I was a hot commodity across the board. You guys are lucky you got dibs.”

� � � � Johnny squinted up at the wall of the Detention Fortress. He’d followed Isabel’s finger to a pair of purple blotches on the parapet. Now the Activity Club was huddled up and whispering as if they’d seen a ghost—the same ghosts that he was seeing.

� � � � “Go, my monkeys!” Devilora called back to her Student Council minions. “Send every last confiscated weapon to the EVIDENCE LOCKER! Take the Black Saints’ MOST WANTED to the INTERROGATION ROOM! As for the REST of the students...” DuNacht cast a devious glance over her shoulder as she stooped into the darkness of her cobweb-covered lair, an office in the castle’s highest tower. “LET THE WITCH TRIALS BEGIN!!”

� � � � The double doors below her at the far end of the prison yard were suddenly thrown wide by black-clad bailiffs. Barrister emerged from the shadowy courtroom within, reading out a roll call from a lengthy, yellowed scroll.

� � � � “ABBEY ABNER!” the Black Saint Councilor-General snootily proclaimed, and a beefy bully girl was swiftly seized and dragged away. Barrister slammed the doors of the courtroom shut behind them, sneering at Johnny and the other captives of the Detention Fortress before he disappeared from view.�

� � � � Bobblehead loomed above the threshold like a gargoyle. He’d lingered as the President and sphinxes left the wall to follow Devilora.

� � � � Klang, klang, klonk! A cartful of confiscated possessions rattled as new evidence was poured onto the pile. Isabel and Isaac exchanged a glance, having both glimpsed Max’s baseball bat as it was hauled away.

� � � � “You’re coming with me,” a Student Council trooper said. Handcuffs slapped around RJ’s punk-rock wristbands, instantly inspiring a future album cover.�

� � � � “The HECK they ARE!” roared Johnny. His veins burned like white-hot wire as his heartbeat surged with anger.

� � � � He lunged to pull his friend free from the Student Council’s grasp... only to freeze as RJ recoiled from his touch. A searing stovetop heat had sparked the reflex. Johnny stared back at his dumbfounded friend, no less confused than they were... but, unlike RJ, Johnny decided at once that he deserved the blame for whatever had just happened.

� � � � “Take this delinquent to the interrogation room,” a gruff Student Council warden said, gesturing towards a distant door. “To join Johnny Jhonny’s other squealing piggy.” He smirked a malevolent smirk. “That prize hog Ollie Oop.”

� � � � “...Really weird thing to say, dude,” Max said.

� � � � “Yeah, that was way out of pocket,” Isabel agreed.

� � � � “Some characters simply do not deserve dialogue,” Lisa judgmentally muttered, looking the now-flustered student up and down.�

� � � � Johnny was burning too hot to join in on the roast. He was furious—at the Vice Principal, at the Student Council, at himself. Every time the fire rose in him without release, the embers lingered longer, crackled louder in his thoughts. He wanted to lash out, to let his anger take control. He wanted to keep his cool, to not prove everybody right. He wanted to—

� � � � “Don’t worry, Johnny,” RJ reassured him. They’d already dismissed his fiery touch as a freak trick of friction, and only saw that Johnny was upset. RJ nodded towards the interrogation room. “These weenies can’t even scratch me and Ollie, let alone get us to snitch.” RJ grinned. “I promise, I won’t say a word... and if anyone can keep a vow of silence, boss, it’s me.”

� � � � “RJ...”

� � � � “No offense but you’re literally the only person here who demonstrably breaks a vow of silence like all the time,” Max couldn’t help but comment.

� � � � “I’ll demonstrably break a clown with violence if you don’t zip your quippy lips, Max,” RJ said. “I’ll yank that big red nose right off your face and bounce it off you ’til I give you hitball flashbacks.”

� � � � “...At least I have a nose instead of featureless gray shadow,” Max mumbled back, more pleasantly perturbed to have been parried by a rude peer than offended by their cheek.

� � � � “Don’t concede the premise, Maxwell. Your nose is negligible at best,” Lisa advised him.

� � � � Johnny sparkled with wistful affection as his foul-mouthed friend was hauled off with the evidence cart, whisked away through heavy doors to the west wing of the Fortress, hurling still more insults and a stream of wild punches at their captors all the while.

I'm so excited for, like, the rest of this whole chapter. HEY, please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi!

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[Transcript]

� � � � Deep below the Biddle School, the latest wave of ne’er-do-wells had arrived at the daunting bridge to the Detention Fortress, converging as dark staircases gave way to rough-hewn cavern rock.

� � � � “Isaac, look!” whispered Isabel, gesturing towards the familiar faces who’d just joined the kettled crowd: RJ, Lisa, Johnny, and a very grumpy—

� � � � “Max!” Isaac exclaimed in disbelief. “No way! They arrested you too?!”

� � � � “That’s my line,” Max replied. “What’d they get you for, possession? Ha ha.”

� � � � “What! No! I... I would never drink drugs!”

� � � � “Hey, Bro’Connor,” Johnny cut in. “You would be right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you if it’s dork stuff that you’ll get like big time razzed for in a cool kid PVP zone like detention.” The bruised and battered bully crossed his arms and shook his head. He was glad to be reunited with RJ, who he knew would have his back, but these other poor saps were utterly unprepared for the danger that awaited them inside. “Down here, bro? You either die a nerd... or live long enough to see yourself become like SUPER rad and tough and awesome.”

� � � � “Excellent advice, Johnny,” Lisa said. “Let’s tell everyone we do drink drugs instead.”

� � � � “That plea bargain would only earn a reduced sentence for you, Lisa,” Max scoffed, rolling his eyes at the School Store’s blackmailing crime boss barista. “YOU’RE the one who deals the stuff.”

� � � � “Reduce your sentence to zero words,” hissed Isabel, jabbing Max’s good arm with her elbow. “Literally stop talking.”

� � � � “The strongest substance in my beverages is sugar, Maxwell,” Lisa sighed. “I simply sell the superficial thrill of criminality.”

� � � � “So, snake oil? I’m hearing snake oil.”

� � � � “Delicious normal drinks, Maxwell.”

� � � � “Well if you sell me venomade it’s still fraud if I don’t die,” Max haughtily drawled back, not caring that his argument relied upon his last assertion’s premise.

� � � � “You’ll die,” Lisa pleasantly prognosticated.

� � � � “Oh my god, you guys,” grumbled Isabel. “Can we stop confessing to and threatening to commit crimes right in front of these teacher’s-pet tattletales? We’re in enough trouble already.”

� � � � “Hey,” barked one of their Student Council escorts. “No talking.”

� � � � “Why didn’t you say that SOONER?” Isabel groaned.

� � � � “Because you guys were saying, like, super incriminating stuff,” the Student Council officer replied.

� � � � “SEE?!” Isabel growled, whirling on her friends.

� � � � “Incriminate this,” sneered RJ, refusing to maintain their vow of silence now that silence meant complying with authorities’ demands, and also headbutting a Student Council soldier in the face.

� � � � A swift and fruitless struggle ensued at the gates of the Detention Fortress. This was the subterranean heart of the Student Council’s power, where any brief spark of rebellion could be swiftly snuffed by overwhelming numbers, the grotto’s damp and suffocating air, the rushing river of the moat below the bridge, and the shadow of the mighty walls that rose to meet stalactites on the ceiling. Before long, RJ was subdued, and they were forced, along with Johnny, Max, and Lisa, Isabel and Isaac and a throng of other students, to march in single file through the gates.

� � � � “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your day,” said a Student Council warden. With a snap of his fingers, the heavy doors of the Detention Fortress slowly swung wide to reveal the horrors within.

� � � � A sprawling prison yard stretched out before the new arrivals, a canyon at the heart of chalkboard walls three-stories high. Gathered at the foot of the facade were dozens of dead-eyed students, scrawling, with exhausted hands, repeated vows of penitent contrition: “I will not speak out of turn” and “I will not chew gum in class”, “I will not cartwheel with scissors” and “I won’t kiss frogs in science lab.” The graffiti was so dense that it had blurred to one colorful scream of remorse under the watchful gaze of the inmates’ Student Council handlers.�

� � � � While the yard itself was governed by a rugged hierarchy of bullies who had been condemned to Permanent In-School Suspension—divided into fiefdoms that were ruled through fear and strength—the Council reigned above these petty kingdoms. A monochrome tower that resembled a lighthouse (complete with a searchlight at its peak) stood at the center of the Fortress, from which they monitored the teeming masses down below. Pompom of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals teetered acrobatically at the edge of its railing, cheering on the captive audience that milled about the yard.�

� � � � “Ohmygod you guys are, like, sofreakingcute down there. You’re like TOTALLY my preciouslittle ANTFARM and I’m totally your queen, sofeedmegrubs?”

� � � � Pompom, like many of her fellow Student Council elites, had taken up her station at the Fortress now that more than half of Bayview Biddle School had justly earned detention for their sins.

� � � � “I really, really never thought I’d say this,” Max said, gawking at his harrowing surroundings, “but I think I wanna be homeschooled from now on.”

� � � � On the parapets of the prison yard’s chalkboard walls, Bobblehead and the Student Council President flanked the Fortress’s true mastermind: the hunched and grinning Devilora Demonelle DuNacht. As the doors shut tight behind the new arrivals, the Vice Principal cleared her throat of dust and bugs to give an evil speech.

Thanks for waiting! Next week, it's back to the Activity Club! Please support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! The odd whimsical gratitude subscription or donation goes so much further than you'd think. I hope you'll help me keep this as my job and life's work that I love!

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[Transcript]

� � � � Hidden in a sun-dappled stretch of forest on the bright side of East Island, the Slanted Manse slept in lush ruin, unbothered by the previous night’s upheavals. Birds and insects filled the air with music soft as silence, and the shade made soothing peace between the summer heat and sourceless autumn chill. Spirits darted to and fro, nibbling on strange sources of interminable nourishment, as though the mansion’s wreckage was a whale fall that would never blanch to bone.

� � � � Change, however, had still found its way to the Slanted Manse’s timeless sanctuary: Doorman and his friends were moving out.

� � � � “That’s the last of the furniture,” Doorman said, tipping his hat to a squat little toaster as it jumped into the portal he had opened.

� � � � A parade of chairs and teacups, loveseats, shelving, and duvets had been marching through his open jacket’s doorway for some fifteen minutes now. The objects that he and the Angel had animated over the years had always made for a clunky battalion of messengers and sentries, but Doorman’s group was as starved for personnel as Fauxbia was full of it. Nin’s copies and the sentient decor had done what they could to compensate for the many comrades they had lost in their long struggle... but now, with the Slanted Manse compromised, it was best if the fragile furniture dispersed to safer corners of the battlefield.

� � � � Doorman was well aware, however, that there was nowhere left in Bayview that was ever truly safe. The stooping spirit plucked the key from his cyclopean keyhole countenance and shut his overcoat tight, as if to huddle from an ill wind only he could feel beneath the summer sunshine. Even the Manse had been a gamble, one that they had lost at last. Doorman and his allies had been hiding in a home whose former owner was their enemy... the only graveyard Davy Jones was less than eager to revisit or replace with a price-gouging strip mall. In the end, though, he was not the one who’d stumbled on their sanctuary.

� � � � Doorman sighed, and the wind through the keyhole, as it left him, snuffed the last few fading embers of his power’s soft red glow. The shattered shards of the Great Sphinx were devious, and he didn’t dare count on their mercy now that they had glimpsed his hiding place. While the others sought new shelter, he would face his past mistakes. It was time that he declawed the sphinxes’ wicked schemes for good... and then, perhaps, he’d find the chance to set things right with Isaac.

� � � � “Are you sure you wanna do this, Doormy?” Nin asked, scowling up at Doorman with more worry than frustration.�

� � � � She was riding in repose upon his suitcase like a palanquin, carried by four other Nins she’d conjured to do all the heavy lifting. A complicated system of seniority theoretically governed which Nin could give orders to the others—a system that they frequently ignored, since each new copy shared the same brash and defiant personality.

� � � � “You’re the one who saw the sphinxes making the first move. The danger’s at our doorstep, Nin, and now at Bayview Biddle School. Beyond my pick of fight or flight, I have no other choice.”

� � � � “You could choose flight, dummy,” one Nin said.

� � � � “Or wait for the Angel to call us back!” another Nin chimed in.

� � � � “Time is of the essence... and I know what she would counsel,” Doorman answered, picking up his suitcase before the Nins beneath it could rebel and oust their passenger. “Our lady would advise me to remain in hiding, as she has for many years. She would remind me that my power, Master Lock, would spell disaster in the foul hands of the Fear Witch, or skewered on the hook of Davy Jones. If they could find the key that we had hoped to fabricate anew with Forge’s help, our foes would have a back door to the Great Unknown’s domain... to the power we have ever sought to grant our kindly Angel.”

� � � � “...You make a great case against yourself,” a sulking Nin quipped from a tree branch.

� � � � “I always have,” Doorman mused, eliciting a chorus of annoyed groans from the warren of rabbits encircling him. “I’ve preached the Angel’s peace because my past was rife with conflict. I spoke of justice as if I had ever served it... as if regret for our crusade was restitution for my crimes. I thought I’d learned my lesson well enough that I could teach it. What a fool I’ve been... and now I’ve failed another student.”

� � � � “You’re failing ME if you get WASTED in a CAT FIGHT, Doormy!” Nin snarled, tugging on her ears in her frustration. “You ever think about THAT?! You ever think about ME?!”

� � � � Doorman shone a brighter shade of brass beneath the sunlight.

� � � � “You are always on my mind, Nin. As you do any lonely place, you have a tendency to fill it. I’ve never not been grateful for the smiles you surround me with, old friend.”

� � � � “...You big dummy,” sniffed the Nin whose head he’d leant over to pat. “W-when have I smiled ONCE while stuck with you?” she grumbled, welling up with tears.

� � � � Doorman chuckled.

� � � � “For all your skill at hiding, Nin, you’ve never had the sleight to hide your heart.”

� � � � The rabbit spirit’s red eyes blurred, then overflowed. She burbled out a comeback best phoneticized as “BRGGLUBBR!” and punched him twenty times with her soft fists.

� � � � “...I hate when you get like this, Doorman,” another angry Nin said in a low voice, scowling up at him. “Like you’d be happy losing if your lost cause was correct. Like you deserve WORSE than the bad guys we’ve been fighting all this time!” She crossed her arms and shook her head. “None of us get anything but burned if you go all out in a blaze of guilty glory. That includes your stinky human student!”

� � � � Doorman turned his back to her and took a step uphill.

� � � � “This is not my first fight, Nin, nor will it be my last. There are many battles still ahead... risks and necessary evils I’ve avoided far too long.” The spirit slung his suitcase on his shoulder, glancing back at Nin and shimmering with featureless resolve. “You are young, Nin, and your memories blurred by your time as a grudge. When we first met thirteen years ago, it would not have strained your faith to hear these words: I’ve survived far worse than your worst fears for me... and I have slain a greater sphinx before.”

� � � � A gallery of Nins scrunched up their snouts in worried pouts as Doorman started up the hill towards Bayview Biddle School.

� � � � “Yeah, well! You still gotta take on a Witch and an ugly old vampire! So don’t get scratched to ribbons at some side show!”

� � � � “We’ll be watching from the shadows! Don’t you try to be some kind of cringy hero, DORKMAN, or we’ll groan and blow our cover!”

� � � � “I’m not gonna plead your hopeless case to the Angel, by the way! She’s gonna be MAD! Or, like, calmly disappointed!”

� � � � “You’re not COOL just because you’re finally fighting, Doormy! You know what’s COOL? IDEOLOGICAL CONSISTENCY!”

� � � � “If you win, you’re doing ALL the fights from now on! I’ve been in the TRENCHES this whole time, you lazy jerk!”

� � � � The chorus of jeering faded to concern as Doorman waved a wordless goodbye, disappearing out of sight beyond the treeline.

Thank you for waiting! And thanks for reading! Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Thank you all for being such wonderful fans :^)

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[Transcript]

� � � � “Ew, ew, EW!” hissed Penny. “What was THAT?!”�

� � � � Penny hated bugs and creepy-crawly, many-legged things (a phobia she’d never tried to tackle, since she thought that, as fears went, it was a little bit endearing). Unfortunately, the world of ghosts and spirits was chock-full of nasty critters. All too often, she would be in class, or out with friends, or up on stage, and some weird stinkbug with a human face—or a centipede whose body was a string of bloodshot eyes, or a spider that was dead and thus could fly—would scuttle out of hiding and just devastate the vibe.

� � � � “Where the HECK is my ZWEIHANDER?!” Penny whimpered in frustration (at least according to this semi-censored transcript of her lines).

� � � � “There’s no need to be afraid, darling,” hummed Phantomime. “Given your location, Penny, this would count as stage fright: an obstacle you conquered long ago.” The harlequin spirit’s tone shifted, as though hesitant to share her next suggestion. “Besides... not all who skitter are gross, as they say. Why not keep an open mind? Today’s awful beastie might be tomorrow’s awesome bestie, and you can’t—oh dear god what is THAT? Ew, ew, EW!”

� � � � Penny had courageously drawn back a curtain instead of a blade, revealing, in her flashlight’s glow, a severed human hand. It was green, but stitched with other sickly shades, criss-crossed by spooky sutures, far too large, with screws for knucklebones (someone must have really messed up the assembly instructions). Its stump had been cleanly severed by the hook of Davy Jones, and the meat within was dripping gloopy ectoplasmic goo. As the light of Penny’s phone stretched out its shadow, the hand of Doctor Bruce Burger twitched eerily, scuttled its fingers to face her, reared back, and leapt at the young actress like a predatory alien. A startled Penny screamed.

� � � � Truly ridiculous combat ensued, a clash of titans in the backstage sky of Davy’s model Bayview. Curtains closed and sets collapsed. Dramatic lighting lit dramatic fighting, at least until a stray strike struck and shattered Penny’s smartphone. The younger Spender turned the tide from there: she had found her motivation. It was the zombified appendage that stumbled upon Penny’s missing zweihander first, but, unable to zwield it with two hands, the attacker was swiftly disarmed (a complete loss for a creature who had naught but arm to start). Penny pinned the writhing beast flat with her prop sword’s blunted point.

� � � � “UGH, my PHONE! How am I supposed to afford—HEY! QUIT IT! I said tap out, you little freak!” a disheveled Penny wheezed. “Or the ten count’s getting tallied on your fingers!” She raised a hand to her ear. “What’s that? You’ve only got five? Well here’s ONE MORE!” Penny gave the hand the finger (though I dare not say which one).

� � � � “As I live and breathe...” marveled Phantomime, forgetting that she kind of only half-did half those things.

� � � � “All right, so, like, what’s this creepy spirit’s deal??” Penny asked her partner. A perk of Phantomime’s ability was her sense for other spectral life forms and their powers.

� � � � “This is, er, not a spirit, darling...”

� � � � “HUH? Did somebody, like, die in full Frankenstein makeup??” Penny asked in disbelief.

� � � � “I, um, don’t believe that it’s a ghost, either, my love...”

� � � � Penny blinked.�

� � � � “Then what’s—”

� � � � “Yo, Penny!” called a new voice. “You good?”

� � � � “Oh, my sweet Panini!” warbled a second, a willowy treble that was far more nose than throat. “We heard such frightsome sounds of struggle, oh, and such a stirring scream! We feared our dearest damsel in distress!”

� � � � The Theater Club crew that Penny had left to guard the backstage door, her classmates Snail and Harper, had come stumbling through the curtains to make sure that she was safe.

� � � � “Waaaaiiit, you found your sword,” said Snail. “Hardcore.”

� � � � “And goodness me, but what is that? Some manner of Halloween animatronic?”

� � � � Penny looked down from her perfectly mundane friends to the writhing undead hand that she had vanquished. If they could see it, and—oh god, it really did look quite a lot like earthly flesh and bone—then it was just somebody’s actual, reanimated—

� � � � Penny screamed again, scrambling back from the corpse she’d had pinned.

� � � � Bruce Burger’s hand did not use the opportunity to flee, however. The flash of Penny’s bright white spectral energy, startled free from her for the second time this week, had given the appendage awestruck pause.

Thanks for reading! Please support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi, it's how I keep the lights on! Or pick up the digital sketchbook I made right here! See you next time!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � Penny Spender sighed as she attempted to scroll a reply into existence on her phone, where an unanswered message had sat in its lead balloon speech bubble since the sun rose.

� � � � “No luck, darling?” asked Phantomime. Penny was in near-constant conversation with her spirit. Entering the trance that let them speak was second nature; Penny would pay frequent visits to her partner, hidden in the span of a single blink, while idling in class, or flipping burgers, or sweeping floors, or rushing from one vulturous app’s delivery route to its rival’s next assignment.

� � � � “...Alas!” Penny lamented, giving her sigh a second take with still more pathos. “I lost fortune’s favor long ago! If I may be so bold, which I am told that fickle mistress finds attractive, I daresay that nobody in this world has worked harder than I to win the love of Lady Luck, and I am therefore due a second chance at serendipity!” The spectral’s shoulders slumped. “Y’know what? Forget a lucky break. I’ll settle for, like, any break at all,” she grumbled, fitting more unwritten swears between each word than you would guess.�

� � � � “You’re still my pretty Penny. You can make your own luck, darling, with me here to pick you up when you have fallen. You need only put your tale’s misfortune behind you, and keep your head held high.” Phantomime raised her spectral’s downcast chin for her with one free-floating finger. “I’ve never known a more pleasant cent. You’re as good as gold to me, darling, a priceless, shining treasure!”

� � � � Penny sighed for a third time and held her arms aloft to hug her spirit in a ballerina relevé. Phantomime was more her fairy godmother than her fairy tale’s love interest, but every Disney princess deserved to be platonically flattered by their patron from time to time... and Penny deserved it constantly.

� � � � “Thank you, Phantomime. That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me... which is a very high bar to clear, but you do flip with such flourish. I don’t care how I land, so long as you’re catching the coin toss!”

� � � � Phantomime smiled at her, or at least seemed to sparkle slightly. Her face was much more like a mask than flesh and bone, and lagged behind the earnest light that twinkled in her eyes.

� � � � “I’m never spent for good with you to save me, Phantomime,” Penny wistfully pronounced. “You make me feel like a million bucks and counting, babe.” Penny suddenly scowled: she’d remembered her woes. “I sure would like to earn EQUAL interest, though, from the OTHER bond that I once held in trust and high regard... but HE seems to believe I’m worth the wait that’s gonna KILL me! My feet hurt from having to STAND for the INDIGNITY of GETTING GHOSTED by a dork like MASTER GUERRA!”

� � � � It had been like three or four whole hours and Ángel STILL hadn’t texted her back. She’d even CALLED HIM, like some kind of ELDERLY DINOSAUR. She’d LEFT A MESSAGE AFTER THE TONE, like it was the NINETIES or the DARK AGES. What had happened to his promise to drop everything the moment that she needed supernatural assistance?! It wasn’t like Ángel had anything ELSE going on lately; Penny’s master was just as divorced and carefree as he had been when they’d first met... right after that life-changing gift had been dropped upon her doorstep by some kid she’d never seen before or since.

� � � � Penny groaned. She shouldn’t have been so worried about Master Guerra getting mad at her for unleashing her white spectral energy in public (she blamed her biological father figure’s volatile discipline). She shouldn’t have hesitated, decided to sleep on it, and waited until the morning to text him “are vampires real like in real life” and “not a joke im being so for real (like vampires?)”. Ángel was definitely out of cellphone range on Nevermoor again, meditating under a waterfall or doing naked yoga on a beach. Of course he would disappear for some blameless reason and make it entirely her fault that she couldn’t get in touch with him. It was entirely his fault!�

� � � � Penny flicked away the frustrating sight of Ángel’s last message (a broken Pinterest link that he had labeled “Food for thought ....”) and clicked on her phone’s flashlight. There was no rest for the weary, and Penny had other tasks on her to-do list besides surviving and sorting out why Ritz Price-Lee, of all people, had sprouted fangs and tried to suck her blood. Bayview Academy’s Theater Club (a deeply distinct group from its hated rival, the Drama Club, which had seceded from its more queer, more experimental counterpart with most of its funding and very little of its talent) had been putting together a slapdash summer production of THE SHREW: UNTAMED, a send-up that was mostly just sword fights and tragic death scenes. Penny was playing Dark Bianca and needed her zweihander to properly rehearse... but Bayview Academy’s bigwigs had shut down the main auditorium for “spring cleaning but in summer” (a huge amount of dust had somehow accrued in the ballroom overnight).

� � � � Luckily, Penny had a knack for picking locks (it had only taken months of grueling practice to reveal she was a natural savant). She’d been able to sneak backstage, therefore, with some Theater Club friends keeping watch at the door. Penny’s flashlight rippled on the surface of the ballroom’s velvet curtains. Her production’s props were somewhere back here... but everything had been rearranged for the rich donor soiree that had apparently been held here at the school the night before.

� � � � “Whoa, check it out!”

� � � � Penny’s spotlight had fallen on a very strange set piece indeed: a scale model of the Bayview archipelago, damaged and thrown to one side of the stage (perhaps by the rage of a vampire, which Penny now knew were quite possibly real). Penny kicked it for fun, just to feel like Godzilla.

� � � � “Hey, I can see my house from here,” she said, noting the wilted West Island mansion she reluctantly returned to every night.�

� � � � It looked soggy and saggy, as though splashed with water, which had captured its dilapidated state much better than its modelmaker. A torn plastic bag (the sort someone might store a goldfish in) was draped over its roof, too.�

� � � � “That’s strange,” Penny mused aloud.�

� � � � It didn’t seem as though the bag had been placed there with much intention... and yet it was an accurate depiction: one wing of her parents’ house was currently wrapped in impassible plastic. Its halls were being fumigated for roaches that her father had attracted (he’d built a butter statue of himself in lieu of budgeting for therapy). It was Penny’s first excuse in months to leave her cage and couch surf, though her mother was demanding she return tonight for dinner. For as little hope as they had for her (now that she’d been “consumed by the fires of the culture war” or whatever), Penny’s parents were still far too insistent on controlling every aspect of her life. Ever since Richard had run away from home, her mother and father had been afraid she’d do the same... as if she hadn’t yet deprived them of the only son they had left to inherit their warped values. It wasn’t like they still had anything else that she could steal on her way out.

� � � � “You know, darling,” Phantomime hummed in Penny’s ear, “this does seem a rare opportunity for a bit of dramatic catharsis...”

� � � � Penny underlit her smirk with her phone’s flashlight.

� � � � “You know I live for drama... and I’ll happily destroy for it as well!”

� � � � With a flick of her wrist, Penny ripped her parents’ mansion from the model, reared back, kicked a leg high, and hurled her hated home across the room. It bounced off the far wall with a satisfying splat, careened off a curtain, and cleanly sank into a big hole in the middle of—

� � � � Wait, why was there a big hole in the middle of the floor?!

� � � � “What scumbag carved a PITFALL in the stage?!” Penny hissed in a furious whisper, deploying different, sharper words I shan’t repeat. “If those Drama Club snobs are trying to Phantom of the Opera our performance...!” she fumed, trailing off into a growl.

� � � � Before Penny could raise her torch to the ceiling to inspect it for masked saboteurs, an eerie scuttling at her feet stole back the spotlight. Penny Spender blanched in fear. Something had darted from the shelter of the pit into the dark beyond the curtain, disturbed by the house she’d thrown into its hiding place.

For a guy with black blood he sure goes red in the face a lot. Hey! If you've been living under a rock like a cute little bug, you may have missed that I released a DIGITAL SKETCHBOOK that you can get for $7+ RIGHT HERE! Thank you all for your generous support! You can also support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Please do! Thank you and thanks for reading!

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[Transcript]

� � � � “I like your initiative, son,” Davy sneered, clapping a fatherly hand on Gage’s shoulder. “MOST of my thralls just hang around and upside down once their to-do list’s done... but why restlessly roll in your grave until the night shift when there’s still so much daylight to burn? I’ll happily find work for you, my boy!”

� � � � Gage frowned and grumbled under his missing breath. He’d been hoping for more meaningful guidance than a mere “get back to work.”

� � � � “...You made the right call, young man,” Davy Jones smirked as he loomed back into eye contact with Gage. “The path to the penthouse starts on the ground floor... and it’s high time you started climbing. Many of my senior employees were fired last night, so to speak. There’s vacancies amidst the ash where they once stood. Plenty of room for promotion.” Davy grinned. “I see dark things in your future, son! Business as usual is changing rapidly around here, and you’re proving yourself qualified to—”

� � � � Gage scoffed, which earned a frown from Davy.

� � � � “...Was I saying something funny?” he asked, putting ten percent more fang into each word.�

� � � � “Not really.” Gage shrugged. Everybody turned to cheap teen labor when adults were too expensive or in sudden short supply. Same as it ever was, like Paige said.

� � � � “...Ahh, I see. You’re skeptical, after last night’s fiasco. You think that any cold body would do to fill your predecessors’ smoking shoes. You don’t believe that change is coming!” Davy sighed. “That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, young man. You have to manifest your destiny! Don’t you realize that’s the same lack of confidence that repels that frigid flame of yours?? You have to set a lofty goal and strive for it to reach your full potential!”

� � � � Gage glowered up at Davy, letting anger beat out fear of being punished for his cheek. He didn’t want to hear any of this from the vampire who’d stopped the clock for him. Paige was right. He was stagnating at the awkward edge of adulthood for eternity... and it was all Davy Jones’ fault.

� � � � “What potential? What’s the point? I can’t be you. I’m me forever. Ugly, slouching, empty-headed, not her type. I can’t change that with confidence.” He couldn’t change anything about himself at all. That was his curse. The whole town’s curse—

� � � � “You’re right,” Davy sighed. “You can’t.”

� � � � Gage blinked up at him, and found that Davy’s gaze had started glowing with an eerie golden light.

� � � � “Stand up straight,” Davy commanded him.�

� � � � A bewildered Gage instantly snapped into the best posture his gangling body had ever known.

� � � � “Say something genuinely nice about yourself,” Davy ordered next, clasping his hand and hook together to add an unspoken, pleading “for ONCE.”

� � � � “I’m... strong. And... fast,” Gage was forced to confess through gnashing fangs. He’d had to dig deep to find anything that fit Davy’s compulsory criteria.

� � � � “There you go!” beamed Davy, clapping Gage upon the back. “No, no, don’t add the caveat—I see it coming, young man! ‘Strong and fast like every other vampire.’ WELL, that’s where you’re WRONG.” Davy snapped for another thrall, a bodyguard in riot gear perched high upon the ceiling. “You two. Arm wrestle. Don’t hold back.”

� � � � In a whirlwind of obedience, Gage soon found himself with a scrawny elbow planted on Davy’s desk, staring down a larger, much more muscular vampire cop.

� � � � “I can’t—” he began to say, but then there was a mighty KRACK!! that echoed through the room.

� � � � Compelled by Davy’s orders, Gage had bested his opponent in an instant... and splintered his sire’s doubtlessly expensive desk straight down the middle.

� � � � “Ha HA! There, you see?” Davy laughed uproariously. “It’s AGE that gives a vampire their strength, young man, not MUSCLES! Not when you turned, but how long it’s been since! You’re still growing every day!”

� � � � Gage stumbled backwards, bewildered, flush with some undead facsimile of a surging heart’s adrenaline. Davy eased him into his own high-backed office chair, marveling cartoonishly at his minion as if surprised to find the throne a perfect fit. He grinned and took a mocking bow.

� � � � “Don’t forget, young man: I bit you first. There’s NO ONE that can rival you.” Davy rose back to his full height: “Except ME, of course,” the gesture added in fine print. “You were right that you have limits on your own... but with MY guidance and encouragement, there’s nothing you can’t do. Nothing you WON’T do! NOTHING and NO ONE that you cannot BE—that you, son, cannot HAVE!”

� � � � Mayor Hijack watched in horror and scientific curiosity as Gage was taken in by Davy’s words. Both halves of the homunculus agreed that this was objectively and/or subjectively far more sinister manipulation than their own humble, homegrown, farm-to-plate body-snatching. Even if they couldn’t find the chance or nerve to vaporize Cody’s evil father, the Hijacks had to at least stick around to sabotage his scheming. There was more at stake than Sophie Sybil’s safety, which was already reliant on the real Bill Spender staying fast asleep (or whatever state their meat puppets were actually put in while the Hijacks were ethically overtaking their pathetic human minds). The whole town needed a hero to save the day from Davy’s plans... and the Hijacks were that hero AND his sidekick!�

� � � � Davy, meanwhile, chuckled down at a wide-eyed Gage like a sinister genie. He really had to get around to learning this weird kid’s name.

� � � � “Let’s see...” Davy mused, scratching his prodigious chin with his prodigious hook. “What’s left on the list to get you your girl? We took care of slouching, I could order you to GET OFF YOUR PHONE and READ A BOOK FOR ONCE to fill that empty head of yours with some sweet nothings she’ll adore, and then... is ugly really that much of an obstacle?”

� � � � Gage thought of Ritz.

� � � � “...No,” he said.

� � � � “Then what’s left to stand in your way?”

� � � � Gage thought of Ritz.

� � � � Davy grinned, a grin that shone within the shadow as the curtain closed behind him.

� � � � “...Competition, is it? Never a deterrent for a daring businessman. Who’s she mad about, son, if not you? Tell me. Be honest. I can weigh her options—maybe even help you tip the scales.”

� � � � Gage felt the vampiric compulsion to confess drawing closer to his secrets... no, to Paige’s secrets. Gage could say the word, and her doomed plan to have a thrall all to herself would be cut short. Then she’d have no reason to pal around with some obnoxious, grovelling rich girl replacement. Then Davy would—

� � � � Gage’s blood ran colder than its baseline, but it still ran all the same... the faintest pulse of dead biology expressing buried guilt. What would Davy do? Would he hurt Ritz? Would he hurt Paige? Gage had been deprived of tools to know in words why he was feeling shame already, discussing Paige, and winning her, behind her back like this. When those tools had been offered to him—shared as pointed jabs or soft suggestions, or raised up as a shield against a weapon he had taken up and brandished without thinking—Gage had turned them down and turned away, refusing to accept he could be anything but his sad story’s victim. Early on, when he’d still reached for empathy instead of proud self-pity, his father and his brothers had made sure to set him straight. Now he made the wrong choice on his own, without their help. This time, though, Gage sensed his soul upon a crooked cliff... even if the howling of his conscience was no more than wordless wind. He couldn’t throw anyone he knew to the wolves... or worse, to Davy Jones.

� � � � Gage, however, couldn’t keep his mouth shut, either, thanks to Davy’s binding orders. With his mind reeling, the young vampire stumbled on a loophole and dove for it without thinking. There was no more time for thinking. The words would slip free on their own if he didn’t choose them himself—

� � � � “S-s-some mascot. Paige is mad about some weird mascot.” Gage gulped, shrinking back in Davy’s chair. “Somebody in a mascot suit saw us, y-y’know, doing frickin’ vampire stuff... and Paige thought I, like, handled it poorly. Or whatever.” He shrugged a nervous shrug and looked away. “She was worried you’d, like. Punish us. Y’know? So we, uh. Weren’t gonna. Um. Tell you.”

� � � � Gage felt the compulsion ease at last as he fulfilled its terms in full... and Davy, too, seemed satisfied, drawing back and nodding with what felt to him like understanding.�

� � � � “Ahh...” sighed Davy. “I see how it is. That’s the trouble with being me, isn’t it? I welcome my minions with open arms”—Davy looked down at his hook—“and people see an iron fist. Tell dear Paige that there’s no need to punish any of you. There’s no death penalty for VIOLATING THE MASQUERADE or what have you. We’re ALL evil vampires, aren’t we? I want to KNOW about these things, so I can deal with them... for US!”

� � � � “D-deal with them?” Gage asked.

� � � � “Yes, yes, leave it to me. We’ll find you far more prestigious work. You’ve earned it!” Davy turned to Hattie Henchman, who was off in a corner losing at her own shell game as she practiced sleight of hand while on the clock. “Captain, who’s on guard duty downstairs? We could use an extra pair of eyes on Cody.”

� � � � “...Sir?” asked Stephen’s mother, furrowing her scarred brow in confusion. The room began to fizzle into silence. “What, um! What do you mean? Sir?”

� � � � Davy blinked at her, and then his other gawking minions.�

� � � � “Hm? What’s got you all cowering? Out with it!” he said impatiently; Davy hated being in the dark almost as much as he loathed being in the sunlight.

� � � � “Sir, your son’s at school, sir. We, uh, had a couple officers give him a ride to—”

� � � � The pressure in the room changed in an instant. Every surface suddenly felt like sinking quicksand, even as it stayed unmoving.

� � � � “WHAT. DID. YOU. SAYYY?!” Davy roared in harrowing fury, casting aside his debonair persona like the skinsuit of a werewolf. “ON WHOSE ORDERS?!”

� � � � Captain Henchman nervously glanced at the mayor. Half of Hijack lurched with fear; the other half began to draft a sensible and legally sound will.

� � � � “W-well I may have rubber-stamped some business as usual downstairs while you were BUSY, Dave, but—”

� � � � “WE ARE NOT OPERATING UNDER BUSINESS AS USUAL, YOU IMBECILE! YOU SENT MY SON INTO THE WITCH’S WEB!!”

� � � � The Hijacks gulped. Freeing Cody from captivity was the heroic thing to do, he’d thought. This way, even without getting grounded, Cody could maybe sneak away and meet his wolfmom instead of going into lockdown on the night she was and/or wasn’t herself. The Hijacks had surely done a noble deed... but was that noble deed to die for? Only time (specifically several short seconds) would tell.

� � � � Davy surged with spectral energy as he stormed closer, raising his haunted hook high. He shoved one fearful goon aside, then swiped at another who wasn’t even in his path. Where were his failsafes? His chain of command?! There was blame enough to go around and SLAUGHTER EVERYBODY!�

� � � � “DID YOU THINK WE HOLD SIX MEETINGS EVERY MONTH ABOUT HIS SCHEDULE FOR FUN?! IT’S A FULL MOON TONIGHT, YOU PREPOSTEROUS FOOLS!!”

� � � � “I-is it, sir?” his secretary asked, squinting down at her notes in surprise.

� � � � Davy blanched in fear and fury. The Bayview reboot had muddled their vacuous minds! It had muddled his intricate CALENDAR! If he broke his promise—! If Shrike made good on her old threat, NOW, at this sensitive time—!

� � � � “I WANT A FERRY WAITING AT THE DOCKS! SOMEONE GET ME A CAR WITH TINTED WINDOWS RIGHT THIS INSTANT!! SOMEONE ELSE GET THE MAYOR OUT OF MY OFFICE AND BACK TO HIS SAD LITTLE LIFE UNTIL I’M HUNGRY!! PUT that GUN down, Captain! I do NOT need MORTAL BACKUP to face FAUXBIA—I have ENOUGH DEAD MINIONS ALREADY... or you’d ALL BE DEAD ALREADY!!”

� � � � “W-what about me, Davy?” Gage asked, rising from his chair. He was his strongest thrall. Surely there was something that—

� � � � “GO CLEAN UP YOUR OWN LOOSE ENDS!! That’s an ORDER! And that’s MR. JONES to you!” Davy snarled, forgetting he had ordered Gage to call him by his name. He remembered, though, the work he’d put into earning his loyalty (like two whole conversations!) and so he added the friendliest footnote he could muster in his rage: “I trust that you’ll take care of it in a manner that earns my approval... and doesn’t require still more of my precious time and attention!”

� � � � Davy swept out of his office like a bat out of a place he ought to be.

Thank you everyone who picked up the sketchbook! It's been a huge help and relief after a rough tax bill. If you missed it last week, I put together a 183-page digital sketchbook that you can purchase for a minimum of $7 right HERE! Grabbing this is a great way to support me and Paranatural! You can also support my work on Patreon or Ko-fi! Thank you again everybody! I really appreciate it!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � “Hold your hearses, son,” Davy said to Gage, guiding the vampire teen back towards his seat. “Haven’t you heard that good things come to those who wait? What’s the hurry?” Davy grinned. “You’re not getting any older.”

� � � � Gage gave his boss the closest look to spite that he could find the nerve to muster. Coming here was a terrible idea. He’d let anger and exhaustion get the better of him, and it was hours past his bedtime. Gage should have been snoozing in the rafters of a ramshackle small business by now, not sitting in a sunlit room awaiting his obnoxious sire’s attention.

� � � � “You asked me to come to you if—” Gage bit his tongue (an extra-painful effort for a vampire). “You gave me your business card.” He didn’t dare pull it out of his pocket. Davy would have a psychoanalytic field day if he saw that Gage had crumpled his contact information and then struggled to smooth out the wrinkles for forty-five minutes.

� � � � “Yes, well,” Davy sighed, “it has a phone number on it for a reason.” He snagged Gage’s shoulder with his hook hand when his minion moved to leave. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! My word. You young vampires can take a bullet, a beating, and blood from the innocent, but you still can’t take a joke! THAT’S A JOKE, TOO! STOP OVERREACTING!”

� � � � “I’m NOT,” said an exasperated Gage.

� � � � “That’s the joke!” sighed Davy, glancing at the mayor for some middle-aged-male solidarity.

� � � � “HA!” laughed one half of the mayor, mostly out of pre-assassination-attempt social anxiety. The Hijacks had been busy reflecting on the fact that the last time they had seen this weird vampire teen, they had been a funny little goldfish in a bag. The world was a beautiful, whimsical place... and it would be even more beautiful once a ten count in a sunbeam put old Davy in the dust bin.

� � � � “All right, I get it,” shrugged Davy, sitting back against his desk. “You’re not here to play around. You’re serious. Well, that makes two of us, son—and you the odd man out, Mr. Mayor. No offense.”
� � � ��
� � � � “None taken,” replied Mayor Hijack. Logically, he was not the odd man out, because he was two guys inside of a third guy. This made him a veto-proof supermajority, which meant that he could lawfully destroy anybody that he wanted to, including Davy Jones.

� � � � “That’s why I like you, Bill. The best politicians get out of the way for big business. That’s what you’ve brought me, isn’t it, son? You wouldn’t waste my time for anything less... right?” Davy smirked at Gage and coaxed him closer. “You have the floor. Speak your mind, son. How’d the rest of our little PTA soiree go for you and your lady friend? You’re not here for a shoulder to cry on, are you? A triumphant high-five, perhaps?” Davy raised his hook expectantly.

� � � � “...That’s not what’s on my mind,” lied Gage. It at least wasn’t what he wanted to speak about with Davy.

� � � � “Now, son,” sighed Davy Jones, arching an archvillain eyebrow. “Don’t try to hide the painful truth from me. You know I can insist for your own good if you’re ashamed to ask for help.”

� � � � Gage narrowed his eyes at his sire. He knew that Davy didn’t actually care about his love life—or lack thereof—but it wasn’t like he had anybody else left to complain to. His dysfunctional family had moved away years ago, still believing he’d cut ties with them and left Bayview himself. Paige had only texted him for proof of life... like she even actually cared. Youthy was currently hanging from the ceiling of his van in the garage downstairs, pretending to sleep and refusing to speak to him. Evidently, saving her life from sudden death by daylight wasn’t enough of an apology for... whatever he did wrong. Gage didn’t see why everybody else got to be angry at him. HE was the one who’d been heart-crushingly humiliated.

� � � � “...I tried to make a move and Paige freaked out on me like I was a total disgusting creep,” Gage grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets. “There. Are you happy??”

� � � � Davy and the mayor exchanged a glance of parental concern.

� � � � “Of course I’m happy,” Davy said with a shrug. “It comes with the conquered territory when you’re rich, immortal, invincible, and adored by the wonderful son your hard work spoils. Not that you need all those things to find joy in life’s simpler pleasures. Just ask our cheerful mayor over here!” he added, jabbing his hook at the mortal and moneyless Bill, a man whose son had robbed him and then “skipped town” after high school.

� � � � “It’s true,” the mayor droned out of the left side of his mustache. Evidence suggested that Davy was objectively enjoying his unlife, even though his wonderful son hated him, and even though he had like three different weird vampire weaknesses that could explode him in an instant. Money alone really could buy happiness; the data didn’t lie.

� � � � “Okay?” Gage scoffed. “Good for you?”

� � � � “What’s good for the ghoul is good for the goblin, young man. My point is you should follow our example!” Davy rose from his seat against his desk, slinging his jacket over his shoulder to complete his PSA look. “That’s how you’ll get your girl, my boy, or finally get over her. Unlive a little! Start a business, get involved in local politics, change your look like Mayor Spender did! Er, not exactly like he did, mind you... but, pun intended, do revamp yourself. Brush your fangs, comb your hair, get more sunlight—work on YOU for a while. Eventually, you’ll either meet HER standards or raise YOURS beyond her reach! There are plenty of mosquitoes in the swamp.”

� � � � While Gage stewed in surly skepticism, the Hijacks were having a crisis of their own. Mayor Spender? Is THAT what Davy had called him?! Everyone had been referring to him as “Mr. Mayor” this whole time. He’d thought that was his name, like a dynastic title, or a gimmick for the ballot so he didn’t have to come up with a platform. “Bill” was short for basically anything; he figured his full moniker was “Mr. Wilby Mayor” or something obnoxious like that... but no, it was the completely normal and serious birth name “Bill Spender”! No wonder this body felt vaguely familiar: he was piloting an older model of the Activity Club’s bumbling ringleader!

� � � � Oh shoot, Hijack thought. Oh shoot, he thought again, this time from the other side of his bisected brain. He’d honestly been kind of ready to fully sacrifice the mayor in order to destroy Davy Jones. One particularly grim fantasy involved tackling him straight through the window to the island and ocean below. What would Max and Isabel say, though, if the Hijacks super murdered their teacher’s father or uncle or much older brother?? Not doing stuff like that was like the whole lesson they’d tried to teach him, probably. On second thought, wouldn’t Cody be kind of annoyed if his father got totally vaporized? Each half of Hijack half-remembered Cody saying something about not wanting him to get hurt... and that was why he’d wanted to sic his werewolf mom on him, or something.

� � � � The Hijacks balled the mayor’s meaty fists. They were just too good at being bad! All of their superheroism relied upon scary parasite supervillain tactics! They’d definitely gotten too excited after the first strings they’d pulled as a politician started looking strong enough to serve as a deadly garotte. Absolute mayoral power really DID absolutely corrupt! If they were this bloodthirsty, were they really any better than a vampire like Davy? Yes, definitely! But still...!

� � � � “No offense,” Gage grumbled up at Davy, “but I don’t think being more like you would make Paige like me more. She’d definitely like me even less.”

� � � � Davy’s smile took on a smug slant.

� � � � “...And why is that?”�

� � � � Gage twitched, remembering again who he was talking to. Why did he keep letting himself drop his guard around a monster like Davy Jones??

� � � � “Is there something you’d like to report to me, young man?” the vampire overlord asked, stalking closer. “You do remember what I asked when last we spoke, don’t you? Is that why you’re here? To prove your loyalty? Or is it... to DISPROVE somebody else’s?”

� � � � “N-no, I just—” Gage quickly looked away from the piercing nocturnal glow of Davy’s scrutinizing gaze. “I just... always followed PAIGE’S orders, so... since you gave me your card, I just thought...”�

� � � � Gage’s hand closed around Davy’s business card in his pocket. What HAD he been thinking? This was a mistake. He’d been chasing the pitch of the promise that Davy had made, or at least the fleeting feeling it had given him—the feeling that he could be more than he was. That world hadn’t manifested, though, and now Gage felt more lost, worthless, and angry than ever before.

� � � � “...I just wanted someone to tell me what to do.”

� � � � Davy’s smile widened to a grin.

Thank you for your patience! Apologies for the bumpy schedule of late! I'm a bit swamped. Please support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi and help an artist out during tax season! I really appreciate any support. Thanks for reading!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � The lair of Davy Jones, his sprawling mansion, had long been a sanctuary shrouded in grim secrecy and shadow. From the depths of its posh darkness on the dim side of West Hill, Davy had pulled every string in Mayview... avoiding the crosshairs of the Cousinhood of Man, dodging the dupes at the Activity Consortium, and besting both of his ridiculous rivals in the Phantom Threat Authority. Davy had succeeded—seized his wish without a visit from old friends besides the Burgers—and now he could at last bask in his scheming’s dark reward.

� � � � His dark reward, unfortunately, was a skin-searing surplus of sunlight... but Davy Jones was still considering basking in it, given how fang-gnashingly frustrated he’d been since dawn had broken over “Bayview”.

� � � � “Mr. Jones, it’s your lawyer! He’s being sued too! Apparently he went full Renfield in the courtroom, started heralding your dark reign to the zoning board—”

� � � � “Some punk kids tagged your statue at the Mega Mall, Mr. Jones, first with graffiti and then on social media! Everybody’s calling you Davy Jorts! It’s trending, sir! It’s viral!”

� � � � “We got reports of three trenchcoat weenies and a laptop dork makin’ landfall on Nevermoor, chief! If it ain’t Cousinhoodlums, it’s the tax bureau. Permission to use the army surplus less-than-lethal-but-often-lethal-anyways bazooka?”

� � � � “Sir, I need your signature on this!”

� � � � “...This is a photo of me,” Davy doubtfully observed, squinting at the glossy printout he had just been handed.

� � � � “I’m a big fan, sir!” declared the Davy’s Favey who’d delivered it.

� � � � “That’s not what I meant when I said I wanted a fan in here, you fool,” sighed Davy. He autographed the photograph with slightly less enthusiasm than usual, though he still took the time to draw his face in where the camera had failed to capture both his good side (which did not exist) and his bad side (which did not appear on film). “I said this stuffy office needed better circulation, Officer Marshal. I asked for—”

� � � � “My veins are clear and my heart is pounding, sir, don’t worry! I’m here to serve you and my blood ’til I collapse! Feel free to crack me open when you’re thirsty!”

� � � � Davy sighed and waved his hook at a nearby office plant.

� � � � “...Just pluck a frond and get to fanning, will you?” he said, loosening his tie before returning to his backlog of petitioners and paperwork.

� � � � Davy spared a haggard glance up at his stunning view of Bayview, a sunlit vista that a handful of his mortal minions were currently attempting to conceal with hurriedly purchased blackout curtains. His mansion’s facade, like his own handsome face, now loomed triumphantly over the bright side of West Island, visible and known to almost everyone in Bayview. Davy had gotten exactly what he’d wished for... plus or minus a few minor details that were really no big deal. They’d only spoiled ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING!!�

� � � � Davy had revealed himself to his enemies, put his location on the map, shattered the PTA’s alliance, and lost the trust and patience that had led the Great Unknown to take the bait and bite his hook. He’d let Razor Rex and Fauxbia escape (if only until nightfall) with the key and door he’d used to reach his wight whale’s wishing wellspring. He had reorganized his organization for an existence in the open, for open battle, and received a sunny archipelago where opening the blinds would blind him and then burn him down to bones. Now Davy was putting fires out all across Bayview—some of which had been ignited by the recent immolation of his most important thralls!

� � � � The servants that remained had been left scatterbrained and scattered by his kingdom’s misspelled rebrand. The closer they’d been to the calamity’s epicenter, the more their minds were still muddled by the Great Unknown’s hypnotic wishful thinking. Some vampires had kept to old schedules and waltzed cluelessly into the sunlight. Other henchmen had suddenly accepted that they were months deep in legal proceedings stemming from Davy’s near-total takeover of West Island, and kept coming to him with forms and follow-ups from meetings he had no false memory of attending. Worst of all, though, was the total personality reboot that had reenergized—

� � � � “The mayor, um, is here to see you, Mr. Jones! Again!”

� � � � Davy growled and grit his fangs.

� � � � “I ought to suck that sucker dry and make a proper thrall of him. Then he’ll need an invitation to annoy me.”

� � � � “DON’T THREATEN ME WITH A GOOD TIME!” boomed a cheerful new arrival, who had thrown his barrel chest straight through the door like Donkey Kong. “Threatening an elected official is a Class D felony,” Mayor Spender added, dropping to a sober tone and pushing up his monocle.�

� � � � “Mr. Mayor,” Davy grimaced, rising from his desk as any ghoul would from the grave.

� � � � “BIG DAVE!!” laughed the mayor. “Smaller David,” he corrected himself—a much more logical nickname, since Bill was slightly bigger (when he wasn’t slouched and bloodless).

� � � � “Billy Boy,” Davy grinned, reluctantly compelled to match his minion’s exuberant energy. “My favorite bloodbag! What a man! What a flavor!” He smooched his hook, which was conveniently curled into chef-kiss position at almost all times. “Full-bodied! Rich, at least at one point! And I’d say three-or-four-stars rare: B positive!”

� � � � “I try to be, Dave, I try to be,” said the mayor, nodding in misunderstanding. “In trying times, that’s all a politician CAN do: try. ’Cause we sure as heck can’t ACTUALLY SUCCEED, can we?! HA-HA!”

� � � � “Nonsense, nonsense!” Davy hummed, stalking to the mayor’s side. “The red tape binds the right hands, and the tub-thumping adds a nice authentic pulse back to the bloodbath. I’m getting my money’s worth from you, Mr. Mayor, never fear... but do continue to fearmonger.” He flashed his terrifying fangs. “Even an easy sell needs proper marketing!”

� � � � “ANYTHING for MY BIGGEST DONOR!” beamed the mayor.

� � � � “Anything for mine,” grinned Davy, offering a generously inclined measure of their relative heights with his hand (which conveniently left his hook level with the mayor’s major neck arteries).

� � � � A cheerful Mayor Spender, meanwhile, thrust one arm out and held it there expectantly, as if waiting for a warm hug, while his other arm launched forward, as if it had expected a businesslike handshake. The combined result made it seem as though he was attempting to communicate in semaphore, which did seem somewhat plausible: though he held no flags to speak of or to speak with, the mayor WAS dressed to resemble one. His custom-made, red-white-and-blue, star-spangled tailcoat was divided down the middle like the mayor’s personality (and the country, which is what he’d told the tailor when they’d asked him if his order was a serious request). He wore a matching top hat at a rather jaunty angle (an angle that kept changing, as if both sides of his body had been fighting for control of it) and on one eye—his logical left side—he wore a perfectly sensible monocle.�

� � � � Davy looked the mayor’s new suit up and down.

� � � � “...I knew you were a man of classic taste, Bill, but this look takes the cake without eating at all. Most mayors don’t project Mr. Monopoly on purpose.” Davy tapped his hook against Bill’s monocle. “Why, you’re starting to cross over into Mr. Peanut territory!”

� � � � Davy’s burn was brighter than he knew, since Mayor Spender was currently two nuts in one dapper package and taking a chance that could send him directly to jail (if his opponent bought the waterworks and spared him execution). The only burn the Hijacks cared about, however, was burning Davy in the sunbeam streaming through the room’s bay window. The angle was perfect this time, and he looked more deceptively mayoral than ever. The sun was just one awesome wrestling move away!

� � � � “What, these old rags?” the mayor laughed, tugging at his lapels with asynchronous effort. “They’re brand new! Just bought ’em with campaign funds. Don’t worry, I left a short and very obvious paper trail. No one ever thinks to investigate clear evidence of fraud. Oh, and you paid triple for the turnaround... so, here!” The mayor did a little catwalk spin. He’d been working on his balance since his struggle with the last catwalk he’d stumbled down while puppeting Bill’s body. “Feast your eyes—but not your fangs! I’d hate to waste your money getting bloodstains laundered, hm? It’s usually the MONEY you want laundered, right, Dave? Blood money? That’s a crime we do together?”

� � � � Davy narrowed his eyes.

� � � � “...Are you wearing a wire or something, Bill?” Davy asked him, narrowing his eyes. “You do know that I own the police, right?”

� � � � “There is wire involved in what I’m wearing, yes,” the mayor answered matter-of-factly. “You don’t get lift like this with flab and cheap fabric alone!” he laughed, wrapping an arm around Davy’s shoulders to set up some kind of headlock suplex stunner.

� � � � “...Yes, well. Let’s hope the price tag pays off when I need a political rodeo clown in the next few days. You do look primed and ready to monopolize the media’s disdain.”

� � � � “A politician’s got to look the part!” said Mayor Hijack, sweating as he led Davy still closer to the window. “Whatever it takes to pass as Bill—er, pass a bill. That’s, um. That’s what I always say, most likely—”

� � � � Their tandem waltz came to a sudden stop. Davy had dug his heels into the carpet of his office. One failed tug was enough for both Hijacks to realize that they had no hope of making him budge without getting all veiny, which was not a feature safe to show when dealing with a vampire.�

� � � � “Mr. Mayor, have you slept at all?” asked Davy with (undoubtedly sincere) concern and sympathy. “You look awful, and not just because of your outfit. Did you have too much to drink last night? Did I? Have you even been home yet?”

� � � � He had not, since he did not know his address or how to drive.

� � � � “Are things okay at home? One of my men told me that you sculpted a statue of yourself out of butter in your garage last month... and then ran over it on purpose. Was that cathartic? How’s Nicole?”

� � � � “Who?” the mayor asked, since he did not know he was married.

� � � � “Mr. Mayor, you’re a lark, but I am not the jealous type—”

� � � � “...Should I, like, leave?” a third voice grumbled from his slouched seat in the shadows.�

� � � � In addition to the many thralls and servants who were flitting in and out of Davy’s office, there was one other guest besides the mayor who’d been waiting in the wings while Davy finished up his work. He’d been told to make himself comfortable, but seeing as Davy and the mayor were now actively sabotaging his efforts by making him deeply uncomfortable, the guest began to rise up from his seat to slink away.

� � � � Davy Jones held out a hooked hand to stop him.

Thank you for waiting for this one! I fell behind on work last week. Lot on my plate. Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Thanks for reading!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � Zarei stared at Miss Baxter in uncertain silence for what felt like several seconds. She had dreaded this encounter every single time that she’d returned home since she’d first left for the mainland... but despite the flawless poise and fierce one-liners she was certain she’d prepared, now that she and her high school bittersweetheart had finally crossed paths, Mina found herself disarmed of every single weapon she had sharpened.

� � � � “OH WOWWWW,” squeaked Sophie Sybil. She bumped into Mina as she hurried towards the door. “Now it’s a REAL high school reunion! SUCH a shame that three’s a crowd even with s-such DELIGHTFUL company—”

� � � � “Oh, Sophie! Don’t be silly!” beamed Miss Baxter, shifting to block her sudden exit. “We’re more like two point five with you here. Let’s round down!” Rose leaned in close, dropping to a private whisper, and Sophie’s saucer eyes snapped to the hand that had been set upon her shoulder. “...Or should I ROUND UP every sneaky little RAT who’s slinking about somewhere she’s not supposed to be? I’m a little worried that BOTH options would ELIMINATE YOU, Sophie...”

� � � � “Eliminate me later, babe! Ha ha you’re sooo sexy when you’re paranoid!” a sweaty Sophie stammered in hushed tones. “Y’know, um... our goddess works in wacky ways, and so, uh, so do I. For Her. And I will, like, t-totally explain why I was here. Later. I’ll tell you later.”

� � � � “...Fine,” sighed Rose, returning to an audible volume. “Leave me at Mina’s mercy if you must!” Her (mostly) figurative claws retracted, and she released the prey she’d pinned. “Run along, my tricky mouse!” As Sophie hurriedly scurried away, the voice of Sister Cat pursued her, adding a fearful stutter to Sophie’s step. “...I’ll catch up with you SOON.”

� � � � Miss Baxter turned back to Zarei with a satisfied, and now expectant, smile. Mina flinched first in the silence, standing straighter and looking away.�

� � � � “...Still hissing orders at Sophie, I see. Some things never change.”

� � � � Miss Baxter tilted her head, giving Zarei a look of mild, condescending sympathy.�

� � � � “Mina,” she said, admonishing her with amusement.

� � � � “What?” Zarei snapped back.�

� � � � “Hello,” Miss Baxter laughed. “It’s nice to see you.”

� � � � Zarei scowled and crossed her arms. Picking a fight while her ex stayed civil would only make Mina feel even more like she’d regressed to age sixteen.

� � � � “...Hello, Mary Rose.”

� � � � “I mostly go by Rose now,” grinned Miss Baxter, striding into the room uninvited. “Mary Rose was just so church camp, you know?” She’d folded her arms behind her back and was examining the office’s decor as though she’d just entered Mina’s fancy new apartment, nodding in approval and admiring faded posters that Nurse Brittle had hung up back in the seventies. “Some things really should change... and some things have. You’re looking better than I left you, too!” she said, and then winked at Zarei.

� � � � “...You’re too kind,” Mina grumbled. “That’s certainly new. The fake smile and lack of a third name do wonders for concealing your serial killer sociopathy.” The comeback was reflexive: Rose’s wink had struck her like a mallet to the knee.

� � � � “Mina,” sighed Miss Baxter. “We’re not children anymore.” She cocked an eyebrow. Right? it seemed to say. “Can’t we just catch up as friends? Clear the air a little, maybe? I think we’d laugh about a lot of what we put each other through.” She sat back on Zarei’s desk, smiled at Mina until she faltered, then shrugged, laughing lightly to herself. “Really, it’s such a nice surprise to have you back. I mean, who gets the chance to reconnect with their first messy schoolgirl crush like this, you know?”�

� � � � A messy schoolgirl crush. Sure, that was one way to dismiss it and be done with it. Mina looked Miss Baxter up and down, spinning a story from her put-together outfit, her pristine makeup, and her perfectly unruffled hair (not knowing that all three had been refreshed for her specifically). She could see Rose settled down behind a picket fence, abandoning her childish games of love with toys like Mina, married to a fireman or some other hometown himbecile while she slowly and horrifically transformed into her mother. Teasing her old “crush” about their past was surely just a fun indulgence—a brief excursion back down memory lane before she charged ahead on life’s well-tread median path.�

� � � � Doctor Zarei pushed her slipping glasses back in place. Before they’d broken up like a bisected iceberg, Mina had asked for more commitment than Rose had been willing to risk on a “fling” with a girl that she could see a simple future with... dazzled as she was by her own undefined potential for extravagant success. Zarei had been this close to complicating her ex’s unimpressed impression of what life past high school had in store for them by sharing the truth about the world of ghosts and spirits she was part of. Teen Mina, blessedly, had dodged the bullet she had begged for. Still, though, she couldn’t help but suspect and resent that Rose might have been a little less uncompromising for a love that looked a little less like her.

� � � � Zarei foolishly allowed her gaze to fall and check her ex’s finger for a wedding ring. Rose’s riposte lay in swift proof that she could still pierce Mina’s fumbling stabs at subtlety—Baxter scoffed and settled back to gawk at her and bask in her amusement.

� � � � “My eyes are up here, Mina. Where are yours?”

� � � � “What? Go away. I mean, n-nowhere. You’re sitting on my desk. I was just checking if you’d crumpled something.”

� � � � Rose’s skeptical smirk was the finishing blow.

� � � � “...I guess you haven’t changed that much, Mina. Still such a stiff and proper princess! You could at least let your eyes wander somewhere slightly less old-fashioned.” She turned to cast a glance across the office, mercifully sparing Mina from slowly turning scarlet while she watched. “Oops, is it safe for us to flirt here? Let me tell you, Mina, as a teacher, it is SO hard to find anywhere that you can curse or gripe or act a little human without some snitching BRAT sending their helicopter parents on a strafing run. Every nook and cranny in this school is just infested with eavesdropping children!”

� � � � Doctor Zarei cast a frazzled glance down at her eavesdropping children.

� � � � “This fair milady is a vixen,” Handprince warbled, gawking upwards at Miss Baxter. “Why, I’d start a schism if the church did not allow me to remarry her!”

� � � � “I HATE this creep!” Hotwire growled through his gnashed teeth. Zarei was of more than two minds on the subject of her ex, and a number of those minds had been personified as candid cartoon boogermen. “I hate MYSELF!” Hotwire added for good measure, overreacting to some simplified guilt synapse he’d inherited.

� � � � Doctor Zarei cleared her throat.

� � � � “...I’m sure that your students return your fond feelings.”

� � � � “You did when you were a student,” smirked Rose.

� � � � “I had a lot to learn.”

� � � � “I had a lot to teach.”

� � � � “...I did learn MANY lessons from dating you, yes,” Zarei droned sarcastically. “I really should have guessed that you would end up as a permanent part of the school system’s punishing educational gauntlet—sorry, as a teacher.”

� � � � “And you’re a nurse! Fun roles to play so close together.”

� � � � “...I’m a substitute,” Mina deflected, pushing up her glasses.

� � � � “You’re an upgrade!” laughed Miss Baxter. “Gosh, can you relax? I’m not going to bite you, Mina.”

� � � � “YOU relax!” Mina hissed back, more conscious of the open door than her transfixed homunculi. “You’re acting like we’re—! We didn’t part on pleasant terms, if you’ll recall!”

� � � � “That was almost a decade ago, Mina. I’m flattered you’ve had trouble getting over me, but we had good times you could get hung up on, too—”

� � � � “GOOD TIMES that you blackmailed Wendy Wobble to KEEP SECRET,” Mina reminded her.

� � � � “The secrecy was fun, and you were in the closet too,” Rose sighed, folding her arms. “You swooned about it at the time, Mina, and Wendy Wobble was a weaselly little—”

� � � � “You ASKED ME TO JUNIOR PROM and then ARRIVED ON THE ARM of a BOY WE BOTH HATED,” Mina snarled.

� � � � “...Oh my days,” gasped Handprince, who had locked in for the drama.

� � � � “That,” Rose hissed, “was an overreaction to the silent treatment YOU gave me for—HEY! Don’t roll your eyes at me! You said YOURSELF that you—!” Miss Baxter held both of her hands out to shut herself up, just like she always tried and failed to do with her unruly students. “Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Yes, I was awful. I was a HORMONE-DRENCHED, CONFUSED, and DEEPLY IMMATURE young woman who believed she had to hurt the things she liked to hurt HERSELF for liking anything but football boys. I’m very sorry, Mina, that I was PRETTY and could sell my PERSONALITY to someone with exquisite taste like you. LUCKILY,” she said, forcing a pleasant grin as wide as the one on her Death Cult mask, “I’m NORMAL now, and both my looks and personality have only been improving.” Rose took a breath and donned a less-strained smile. “I would simply love to put them to the test of trying to make it up to you, Mina, if you’d allow me to—”

� � � � “Are you about to ask me out?!” Zarei interrupted in offended disbelief.

� � � � “Yes, Mina. Obviously.” She slinked from her seat on the desk to stand beside her. “Oh, don’t be such a teen. I’m not inviting you to prom. I’m asking you to get a coffee sometime. That’s what old friends and Biddle School work buddies do. It’s perfectly platonic.” Rose flashed a winning smile. “Sophie and I meet for bottomless mimosas every Sunday. You should come! You’re exactly what we’re missing.”

� � � � “...You know I don’t drink alcohol,” Zarei grumbled, wishing she’d refused outright instead when Baxter grinned.

� � � � “That’s why I invited you for coffee, silly,” Rose teased, tossing back her hair. “Unless... you had other plans with Sophie I should know about. Honestly, I was more surprised to see HER here than YOU!” Miss Baxter sighed when Zarei shot her a skeptical look. “...I didn’t sic her on you, Mina. I don’t need a classmate to pass love notes for me anymore. Honestly,” Rose winced, “and I thought I was stuck in middle school—”

� � � � “No, I don’t have plans with Sophie, though it’s a treat to see you jealous for a change. You can wait your turn. My homecoming dance card is a little more full than my lineup was at prom.” Mina scowled defiantly at Rose while trying to ignore their toxic chemistry’s return. One way to break eight years of ice, it seemed, was to pummel each other to pieces. “Since it appears I have my pick of Bayview’s litter, I think I’ll be conscientious and keep you neatly separated. After all, Sophie didn’t seem too eager to share my time with you... but I would love her number, if you two are still in touch.”

� � � � “I’ll trade it for yours,” Rose proposed with a shrug.

� � � � Mina scoffed and rolled her eyes.

� � � � “...That was your cue to say ‘no’ if you weren’t enjoying yourself, Mina,” Miss Baxter smirked, shaking her head. “This is SO nostalgic, honestly, and much less vexing with a little more perspective. We were always so oblivious about why we didn’t just avoid each other. I looked down on you, and you looked down on me, but we were BOTH mean girls at heart... and we had so much fun when we were mean together! We could still have fun like that, you know, or we could try out being sweet, if you would put aside that precious grudge I always had to fight for your obsession.”

� � � � “Mom iiis kinda obsessed with that grudge...” mumbled Hitbox, thinking of his unborn sister in her ectoplasm tube.

� � � � “HEY. Unified front, bro,” Horseplay reprimanded him, “or it’s THE MAN who wins the arguments between us!” Horseplay briefly wondered if an underpaid teacher who was a woman could count as The Man, decided that social politics were coded by more complex equations than a newborn homunculus could simply solve with unilateral prescription, and resolved to bolster her convictions with a well-read repertoire of practical and academic knowledge (right after she learned how to read).

� � � � “I don’t intend to subject myself to you, or to this school, for any longer than I have to,” Mina grumbled, putting her foot down (she’d briefly considered kicking Rose before deciding that they both might enjoy it a little too much). “I’m here for one day, and for only one purpose. I will not be staying past the bell. We are not going to be friends.”

� � � � “You’re conspicuously leaving other options on the table, Meeny,” Miss Baxter began, but then the Doctor seized her by the shoulder. Before Rose’s “Oh thank god I’ve been so lonely please kidnap me to a city with a subway and a soul” could leave her brain and reach her lips, Zarei had rather unromantically spun her around and pushed her to the exit of the nurse’s office. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding! God, you’re still so sensitive—OW! Watch what you’re PINCHING!” Miss Baxter sputtered, bracing herself in the doorframe like a cat that did not want to take a bath.

� � � � “Goodbye, Rose,” Doctor Zarei said with (what she hoped passed for) resolute finality.

� � � � “...Aha! You finally said it,” Miss Baxter replied, grinning at Mina over her shoulder.�

� � � � “Goodbye? Yes, but it didn’t stick the first time—”

� � � � “You called me Rose. It has a lovely ring, doesn’t it? Unlike me.” She wiggled her fingers. “I’m single! By the way!”

� � � � “I’m not surprised.”

� � � � “But you were curious!”

� � � � KTHONKK! The office door slammed in Miss Baxter’s face.

Hello, hello! Thank you for reading my yuri manga. Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi, if you're able! It's always a huge help! Thanks again! See you next week!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � “This CONSTANT KNOCKING from you children,” Doctor Zarei growled, throwing open the door of the nurse’s office. “What is it, Halloween? Can’t you try a better TRICK than rinse and repeat when I refuse to TREAT you??”

� � � � The bundle of nerves blinking up at her, however, was not another sickly student... though she was just about as tall as one, and currently dressed like a highschooler hiding a Monday-morning hangover.

� � � � “Oh my gosh! MINA?” gasped Sophie Sybil, tilting down her dark sunglasses. “WOW! NO WAY! This must be FATE!”�

� � � � This was fraudulent fortune teller for “I’ve been stalking you since sunrise.”

� � � � Mina squinted down at her. So deep was her indifferent disregard that Sophie took the utter lack of recognition in Zarei’s eyes as an insult, even though Sophie was well aware that she was costumed like a pop star on the run from paparazzi.

� � � � “It’s ME! Sophie! Sophie Sybil!” She whispered the name in an extra small voice, checking over her shoulder for Death Cultist spies and security cameras. “Y’know! From high school! Your”—Sophie paused for a few telling moments of uncertainty—“friend,” she finished, simpering obsequiously.

� � � � “...Ah,” Zarei said, pushing up her glasses. “Well. How about that.”�

� � � � Mina was not sure how to feel about this unexplained reunion, and, therefore, had defaulted to her comfortable baseline of “annoyed.” Her other childhood bully could at least point to their problematic romance as a less-than-clean break from their previous relationship (though if this change had been an upgrade was debatable). Sophie, however, had just sort of been there in high school: the nervous laugh track in the background of her enemies-to-lovers-and-then-back-again disaster. Any olive branch she’d offered in their teen years had been drugs and alcohol, which Mina only used on ghost amoebas and contaminated test tubes, and they hadn’t spoken since at least two years before Zarei departed Bayview. Sophie Sybil, therefore, had never left the “deadbeat mean girl” category in the Doctor’s unforgiving mental record system.

� � � � “What,” Mina asked, “are you doing here?”

� � � � “Girl, that’s MY line!” Sophie chuckled.

� � � � An awkward silence followed.

� � � � “You were held back,” the Doctor hypothesized, impatiently beginning to present her own theories in the absence of an answer.

� � � � “Ha ha whaaat? Mina, we graduated together! Twice!” Sophie tried her very best not to grit her teeth while forcing a good-humored smile; her dentist had warned her against such exertion, given the adorable size of her overbite.

� � � � “You work here.”

� � � � “No, no. I, um, work over on West Island. In, er... speculative... mineralogy...”�

� � � � This was fraudulent fortune teller for “selling unpolished quartz crystal talismans to superstitious tourists.” Her journalist jobby was too nascent and passionate a pursuit to subject to scathing appraisal from an ice queen like Zarei.

� � � � “You have a child,” Mina theorized. “It’s not here. Perhaps investigate detention.” Any such progeny would have to be, what, five or six? Seven if Sophie’s wild partying had gotten her teen pregnant? Bully for her. That wouldn’t make her offshoot old enough for Biddle School, however... unless they’d skipped as many grades as they’d completed. Genetics truly weren’t a prerequisite for praiseworthy intelligence—

� � � � “Bzzt! Wrong again! Like, WHAT? Girl, leave the divining to ME. You do NOT have the sixth sense for shots in the dark.” Sophie’s own gift for cold reading was telling her that Mina was making some truly out-of-pocket judgment calls behind that furrowed brow of hers, but this was not the time and place to dole out more unlicensed therapy. “Bumping into you is, like, a total coincidence! I just happened to be in the area—”

� � � � “Across the ocean from your workplace. On a weekday. Outside the door of my office. Which you knocked on. The nurse’s office of a middle school.”

� � � � Sophie Sybil took a deep breath through her buckteeth, realigned her chakras, and forced her fakest smile yet.

� � � � “HEALTHCARE, am I right? ROUGH these days! Gotta get it where you can! Can I come in?” She barreled through the doorway before Mina could make the obvious move of refusing her. Unlike the vampires of the Phantom Threat Authority that she was keen to shed some journalistic light on, Sophie Sybil, Ace Freelance Reporter, didn’t need an invitation.

� � � � “A fine milady doth intrude upon my chamber!” Handprince warbled from the corner, but Sophie couldn’t hear him. She whirled on Zarei now that she was inside, suddenly serious and subdued.

� � � � “Listen, Mina. Now that we’re alone—”

� � � � Zarei glanced down at the gallery of spirits gawking up at them.

� � � � “Wait, this room isn’t bugged, is it??” Sophie suddenly asked, succumbing to a surge of paranoia.

� � � � “What?” Mina scoffed. She looked down at the horrible worm she had birthed through mad science. “No.”

� � � � “No. Right. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Look, I’ve had a night you won’t BELIEVE... but I really need you to, okay??” Sophie gave a bewildered Zarei the second most awkward side-hug she’d ever received (the first had been from Jean, though she looked back on it with some degree of affectionate amusement). “It’s, like, GREAT to see you, Mina. Really. You look GREAT. So proud of you for getting out of this backwater tourist trap. And, y’know, um... welcome home.”

� � � � Mina eyed the tongue suppressors on her new desk like a block of kitchen knives in a home invasion movie.

� � � � “Trust me, I wouldn’t have risked coming here if it wasn’t SUPER DUPER urgent. I don’t know how much time I’ll have to run around unmonitored. Mina...” Sophie whispered, not quite sure where she should start. “How much do you keep up with local politics?”

� � � � “Does a DOG ‘keep up’ with its LEASH?” Horseplay heckled in a hoarse voice (ha ha) from the corner. “We can all see the strings, sister. Doesn’t stop the puppet show, you feel me?”

� � � � Doctor Zarei ignored her child (Horseplay’s deeply principled anarchism was undoubtedly a phase, given her rapid rate of deleterious mutation) and continued to narrow the aperture of her eyes at Sophie, confirming one stale bias after another. Sophie had always been an impressionable stooge. She had probably fallen in with some sort of con artist agitator. She was probably here to hawk some odd petition or a pyramid scheme. She had probably joined a cult.

� � � � “The mayor,” Sophie probed. “Mayor Spender? Bill Spender? Do you know him?”

� � � � Richard’s awful father. Sure. The one who thought he’d fled the country for a “liberal bastion,” and believed this meant an off-grid island fortress somewhere out in the Pacific.

� � � � “...I’ve encountered his phenotype.”

� � � � “Great. Great. Perfect. Great.” Sophie started fumbling in her pocket for her phone. “And, um, there’s this bigwig business crook who actually runs everything around here—Davy Jones? Do you know him?”

� � � � Zarei had been slowly circling Sophie, preparing to escort her from the office once she’d found her ideal shooing angle. At the mention of Davy Jones’ name, however, the Doctor stopped. Having learned from Boss Leader just this morning that this man, this Davy Jones, was a Consortium deserter, a vampire, and currently the target of an Agent Walker hit squad, Mina made a logical leap to an incorrect conclusion.

� � � � Davy Jones had been discovered as an undercover bloodsucker. Sophie, who had always been too nosy for her own good, had somehow stumbled on him chowing down, or turning into a bat, or something strange and supernatural like that. Seeking a logical explanation, she’d sought the advice of a medical professional... but needed one she knew who might believe the unbelievable. Perhaps Sophie had heard she was a doctor through the grapevine and, not knowing that Zarei had gotten her degree at a literal dream school, had tracked her down to see if—UGH, but WAIT. Had Sophie gone to Mina’s house? Had her PARENTS told her ex-bully that she was at the Biddle School today? That was a speedrun record for flaunting (or fretting about) her infrequent accomplishments. If only her parents knew that this job she had interviewed for was BENEATH HER! She was a SCHOLAR! An unrivaled spectral duelist! She had created LIFE from SCRATCH, for heaven’s sake!

� � � � “...I know of Davy Jones,” the Doctor grumbled. “What does he have to do with the mayor?” Had he bit him? Had he turned him? Were they ha6ving an affair?

� � � � “Um. Well. The mayor is Davy’s puppet, but—or, like, he WAS his puppet. Now he’s someone ELSE’S puppet, and that’s why, um...” Sophie shook her head, scrolling through the photos she had taken on her phone. “Proof first. Pictures! I have pictures—”

� � � � Someone knocked a playful knock on the open door of Mina’s office.

� � � � “Wow! Twice the surprise that I expected. Am I interrupting something, ladies?”

� � � � If Doctor Zarei had kept her eyes on Sophie Sybil just a single second longer, she would have glimpsed an image of unfathomable value. An empty suit with a hook for a hand. The unmistakable face of Fauxbia, severed from her hunchbacked puppet shoulders. Cody Jones. The plans for Dayview. A glimpse beyond the border of the real, where the Great Unknown—the wight that Mina had dedicated her life to defeating—blurred the photo to a phosphorescent static. Instead, a startled Sophie locked her phone screen just a moment after Mina turned to face her awful ex.

� � � � “Hi, Mina!” Miss Baxter beamed, giving Zarei a cheerful little wave. “Long time no see!”

Thanks for waiting, and for reading! Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! A few of you have been extremely generous and donated to support Paranatural on Ko-fi after I banged the drum last week, so I wanted to say an extra big THANK YOU for supporting my work! I really, really appreciate it!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � Many of Doctor Zarei’s precious memories, unfortunately, had come uncoupled from the lessons they had tried their best to teach her. Years after June Summers had released her from her nightmare, a different door creaked open to reveal Mina Zarei. This time, she’d unlocked it all by herself... but not in an empowering, full-circle sort of way.

� � � � Doctor Zarei scowled down at a trembling student from the entrance of the nurse’s office (her office, for today, until she could exterminate the Witch and then immediately quit).

� � � � “...What do you want?” Zarei droned at the girl, peering imperiously over her spectacles.

� � � � “P-please, um! Mrs. Nurse! C-can I hide in here?” the student asked. She cast a nervous glance back down the hallway. “The Student Council is rounding everybody up! I d-don’t know why, but I was mysteriously compelled to put on soft-soled shoes for gym class, and now they’ve got me dead to rights for dress code treason! I d-don’t—”

� � � � “Are you hurt?” Doctor Zarei asked.

� � � � “N-not yet—”

� � � � “Are you sick?”

� � � � “No, but—”

� � � � “Then soft-shoe somewhere else,” Zarei said. “I’ve far more pressing ailments to address.”

� � � � THUNK! The door swung shut in the frightened student’s face. Zarei’s white coat billowed behind her like the grand cape of a queen who’d poisoned her way to her third husband’s throne. Three regal strides brought her to the rear of the office, where, past a curtain, her loyal subjects awaited.

� � � � “Hitbox! Horseplay! Hotwire!” Zarei barked, throwing the curtain aside. She was not, as one might guess, activating an intricate missile launch sequence; instead, she was addressing a rowdy roomful of her remaining homunculi spirits. “Handprince! Heartworm! Look alive!”

� � � � They did look alive, because she’d brought them to life, a success that less sober mad scientists than Doctor Zarei would have announced to a storm-swept sky while cackling maniacally. Mina wasn’t satisfied with her experiments’ results just yet, however. Each new artificial spirit she created was a prototype, a step towards the perfection that her true goal still demanded. Mina was certain that she would achieve it soon. She might have achieved it even sooner, the Doctor considered with a scowl, if every byproduct born of her clinical trials and tribulations did not require constant babysitting.

� � � � “Milady! This CAD, this little gray cell that BELONGS in a little gray cell, won’t stop laying FALSE CLAIM to—”

� � � � “MOM IT’S MY TURN BUT HANDPRINCE, HE—*SNRRKK*—HE WON’T LET ME PLAY WITH THE SYRINGES, AND—”

� � � � “Doctorrr...! I tried to pet Heartworm and she BIT me REALLY SCARILY. Can you melt her with a potent acid compounddd...?”

� � � � Mina sighed a growling sigh and pushed her glasses back in place. Of the thirteen homunculi recorded in her progressively more ominous, Resident-Evil-style lab notes, seven had solidified within the bizarre spectrobiological crucible that was her parents’ basement. Her prototypes were possessed, it seemed, of a compulsion to meld and metamorphosize, as though they all instinctually sought the same perfection she did through grotesque recombination. While this had whittled down her workload as their caretaker, the main outcome of their chimeric cannibalization was the sabotage of all the useful powers they had been lab-grown to wield.

� � � � Revolting mitosis had split Ventrilobite into Humbug and Heartfelt, dividing her control over emotions between a real bummer of a spirit and a creature that Zarei could only describe as an “aggressively parasitic Care Bear.” The handful of finger-puppet homunculi that Zarei had designed to seize control of all five senses—a suite of powers she had used to run hallucinatory combat simulations—had scattered into single digits, which had added back up to a whole lot less than the sum of their valuable parts. Humbug and Smelly had briefly combined into Stinkbug, who controlled disgust, which was likely why he’d never minded looking in the mirror. Joining him inside a foul cocoon, Touchy and Tasty had amalgamated with their sibling into Handprince, a royal pain whose power let him claim exclusive rights to use whatever he’d last licked a finger and touched. Fortunately and unfortunately, all it took to usurp his control was a damp cloth and (for good measure) a spritz of disinfectant.

� � � � Soon after this, Earworm and Heartfelt had merged into Heartworm, restoring the vital Ventrilobite’s power through Heartworm’s control over vitals—one’s racing pulse and sparking nerves included. What was not included, however, was an education in human anatomy, and so Heartworm was lamentably less skilled as an emotional manipulator... plus, linguistically speaking, pure joy had been a smoother pill to swallow than an equal dose of dopamine. Just last night, Seahorse, who’d once controlled sight, had hitched herself to Stagecoach, whose power to control his fellow homunculi had kept the group on task. The pair’s shared vision of freedom, and their fear they’d been too strict to their fallen siblings, had formed the rebellious Horseplay, whose power seemed to be the fact that no one could control her. This, however, meant that she, too, was unable to control herself, and so had spent much of her morning colliding with furniture and then just sort of propped against a wall.

� � � � Hotwire (whose touch let him take dormant spirits’ powers for a spin) and Hitbox (who could puppeteer inanimate objects while granting them spectral collision physics) were still in their original, extremely useful forms... but Zarei had noticed them eyeing each other with slightly less disdain than usual, and feared what sort of slacker they’d create if they combined.�

� � � � Then there had been Hijack... and Sockpuppy, the happy accident who’d sparked Zarei’s life’s work. She had... resigned herself to their departure. Bayview’s darkness, as she and Jean and Richard had always known, was only ever dormant. Still, though, its sudden return had struck her by surprise, and taken two of her most valuable creations before she’d realized how much danger she had blindly sent them into. While she had no indisputable evidence that proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they were truly gone, Mina had deduced that their demise was the most logical hypothesis... for the empty, gnawing feeling in her chest. Though she’d outgrown Sockpuppy’s antics, though the matter they were made from would reconstitute, someday, into a different form of spiritual life, it still felt like a waste to lose them both in swift succession.�

� � � � Yes... that’s what it felt like. What a waste. Zarei scanned her remaining creations. Keeping them close to her, and safe, was only logical.�

� � � � For their sake, for hers, for everyone in Bayview, she would see the Fear Witch skewered and sealed away forever like the antiquated specimen she was. That crooked old spider had no idea how powerful Doctor Zarei had become since she’d left home. No one did. Mina wouldn’t let DuNacht play any wicked part in the disaster she had spent her life preparing to prevent.

� � � � “I want everyone in place to form my exoskeleton! Battle stations, all of you!” Zarei thrust out a hand. “We’re taking on a devious, merciless, power-stealing supervillain! No fear! No mistakes! That’s how we end this nightmare once and for all!”

� � � � “For HIJACK!” screeched Hotwire, raising a tendril to the ceiling. “To prove he was a USELESS SHRIMP that W-W-WE D-DON’T N-N-NEED!”

� � � � “For Sockpuppy! He was the second best of us... a title one of YOU may yet lay claim to ere the morrow dawns, my lessers!” Handprince tactically positioned himself at the back of the homunculus formation. “PEASANTS... TO WAR!”

� � � � Before Doctor Zarei could hypocritically critique the unhealthy grieving techniques of her literal brainchildren, a cautious knock upon the door of the nurse’s office redirected her annoyance from her spirits.

Thanks for your patience with this one! A humble request: I work very hard on Paranatural and everything is incredibly expensive. If you were on the fence about supporting my work on Patreon or Ko-fi, now is a great time to hop on board and chip in a little to keep it going strong if you can! Tax season is always brutal for freelancers like me.�Thank you very much!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � “N-nothing! Nothing’s funny!” Mary Rose squeaked at June in her startled confusion.�

� � � � The stranger danger alarm that June had set off by sneaking up behind them had been muffled in Mary Rose’s mind by the fact that she was pretty in a goth way. A similar lapse in judgment would one day lead Rose to worship a ten-foot-tall skeleton goddess, but for now it just spared June from getting reflexively throat-chopped by a yellow belt with poor impulse control.

� � � � “Nothing’s funny? That’s a depressing perspective for a kid your age. What about clowns and cartoons? What about little walleyed dogs with smushed-up faces?” June looked from one girl to the other. “C’mon, let me in on the joke! I could’ve sworn I heard you laughing.”

� � � � Mary Rose and Sophie only exchanged a nervous glance.

� � � � “...I could’ve sworn I heard somebody shouting for help, too,” June added, dropping to a disappointed, final-warning tone.

� � � � The bullies folded instantly, if to a crooked angle:

� � � � “Our, um... our friend’s stuck in the closet! The... the handle jammed!” fibbed Mary Rose. “We couldn’t get her out!”

� � � � “Y-yeah!” Sophie agreed. Had she continued to co-sign the lies of rotten ringleaders, her future jobby as a journalist would have proven much more profitable. Unfortunately, this incident was one of several that would one day burden Sophie Sybil with a conscience and integrity.

� � � � “Uh-huh,” droned a skeptical June, who’d seen the girls holding the double doors shut. She rose back to her feet. “Well, HEY. Maybe it’ll conveniently come unstuck now that I’M here, huh?”

� � � � She tried the doorknob. It didn’t budge.�

� � � � Mary Rose and Sophie looked just as surprised as June. They shared exhales of relief and matching sneers of triumph, pleased that their lie had somehow accidentally proven true.

� � � � “...Maybe don’t gloat too soon, you two,” June sighed, glancing back at Mary Rose and Sophie Sybil. “Even the best bluffs need a poker face. Trust me, I was a delinquent mean girl for most of my life. Not every sign you’re up to no good needs to be admissible in court. In the real world, folks’ll slug you for a smug look and way less than solid proof that you deserve it.” June opened her mouth, then paused as she thought for a second. “Not that I’m going to punch you,” she added.

� � � � Both frightened girls nodded doubtfully. For a moment, June wondered why their eyes had gotten even wider, before she realized she’d unthinkingly pulled out a cigarette and put it to her lips.

� � � � “But, um, the best defense—in combat OR in court—is to, um... not commit an offense that you, uh... gotta cover for in the first place. Er, I don’t mean like a criminal offense, though, ’cause most laws are bullsh—UH. I mean some crimes are good.” A floundering June wagged her unlit cigarette at her eighth-grade audience. “And smoking isn’t a crime. Which is to say, ergo, that it is bad. You, uh. You got that?”�

� � � � Both bullies nodded vigorously, discovering at the same time that they would rather die than disappoint her. June winced, far less taken by her own inspiring speech. Behind the girls, a silent Peter Puckett gave June the least-deserved thumbs up she’d ever earned.�

� � � � “...Stay in school,” she sighed in summary, and stuffed her cigarette back in her pocket.

� � � � “We are in school,” said Sophie Sybil, hoping she might earn herself some praise.

� � � � “Great. That’s a great start to staying in it.”

� � � � “We had to stay,” bragged Mary Rose. “We have detention.”

� � � � “That’s not as great a start but, uh. Glass house. Shouldn’t throw stones. All that jazz.”

� � � � Before she’d dropped out of high school, June had gotten detention, once, for throwing a rock through her principal’s window; the wisdom of the idiom wasn’t particularly relevant when the glass house was some other dirtbag’s duplex.

� � � � Remembering her mission, June turned away to knock on the door of the closet.

� � � � “HEY. All good in there??”

� � � � Silence. June tried the doorknob again.

� � � � “She stopped answering us, too,” Mary Rose complained in solidarity, acting very much like she was now June Summers’ crony. A concerned, reproachful frown from her new role model reawakened the young bully’s guilt and cowardice, however. “C-c’mon,” Mary Rose whispered to Sophie, tugging her toady by the arm. “Let’s get back to the library before DuNacht comes looking for us!”

� � � � Peter slouched up behind June as Mary Rose Baxter and Sophie Sybil scurried off. Disciplining students was above his meager paygrade, and Mary Rose was known for fearlessly pelting faculty with milk cartons when she had somebody else around to blame, so Peter was relieved that June had dealt with them herself. Clayview Middle School was the Wild West for a student body who’d learned to be mean and merciless from their even meaner and even less merciful teachers; perhaps a black-leather-clad drifter vigilante was exactly what it needed to change for the better... or perhaps he’d let some total weirdo smoke indoors while telling children that she “wasn’t going to punch them.” Only time would tell, and hopefully it wouldn’t tell his boss.

� � � � “Is, uh... is the door locked?” Peter asked, fumbling with a keyring that he’d pulled out of his pocket.

� � � � “...I don’t think so,” June replied.�

� � � � The doorknob hadn’t clicked or turned. When she had tried to force it, there had been the slightest hint of fleshy give... as though something much stronger than her held the door in place.

� � � � June set her hand on Peter’s to silence his jingling keys.

� � � � “Do you hear that?”

� � � � A whispering hiss, like the breath of a beast whose every exhale was a deathrattle, was drifting from within the darkened closet.

� � � � Peter blinked. He looked around.�

� � � � “Hear what?”

� � � � June arched an eyebrow. Thought so.

� � � � “Hey,” she said, stepping back from the door. “Look away for a sec.”

� � � � Of all the requests she could have made of him, this one was the hardest to obey. A bewildered Peter Puckett did as June asked nonetheless, only pausing for one last look at her resolute expression, and her hair, which seemed to billow in a breeze he couldn’t feel.

� � � � THWACK!!

� � � � Peter Puckett whirled to find that June had struck the closet with... a rusty metal pipe?! Was THAT what he had felt when he had briefly held her jacket? Why, in hindsight, had he thought it would be impolite to ask?? Sparks swirled in the air as the doorknob clattered to the floor, misshapen to a molten wreck by the impact. It truly did look slightly melted—had Clayview’s desert heat deformed it? Could that have been why it was jammed? A different question drowned out the rest in importance as soon as June reared back from her battle stance, let out a satisfied sigh, and fixed the scarlet hair her swing had thrown across her face:

� � � � “...Can I get your number?”

� � � � “HUH??” June scoffed. She stared daggers back at Peter. “Later!!” June harrumphed, deploying a tone that much better matched outright refusal. In the heart of the weapon she’d set on her shoulder, Forge flared with a wordless objection June promptly ignored.

� � � � The closet door, nearly battered off its hinges, now creaked aside at Agent Summers’ slightest touch. A sliver of the sun’s last light fell across Mina’s face, for it had only set within her nightmares. Her eyes began to slowly flutter open.

� � � � “Hey!” said June, smiling down at Mina from the doorway. “Mind if I come in? Or, uh.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Did you maybe want to come out?”

� � � � An awestruck Mina Zarei blinked up at her, bringing her blurry image into focus. Mina’s memory of her dream began to fade, as all dreams do... replaced with a memory that Mina would never forget.

*EDIT* Had to take a break this week to rest some health stuff! Paranatural will be back next week! Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for reading! I would really appreciate it if you considered backing Paranatural's Patreon�(an art-filled post for $5+ patrons went up just today!), or, if you liked the page and have a couple bucks to kick in, maybe throw a donation my way on Ko-fi! Thank you so much!

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[Transcript]

� � � � “Mary Rose, PLEASE! Let me out! Let me out!”

� � � � Mina threw herself against the doors of the storage closet, pushing on them in a panic. She groped for the doorknob in the dark, twisting and turning it desperately, but the effort only made her bullies laugh.

� � � � “Say please,” a teenaged Mary Rose Baxter said in singsong, leaning back to brace the door.

� � � � “I did!” Mina frantically protested. “I did say please!”

� � � � “Say PRETTY please, then,” Mary Rose snickered, exchanging a triumphant sneer with her mousy toady, a young and unenlightened Sophie Sybil.

� � � � “P-p-pretty please!” Mina whimpered. She didn’t have much time. It always found her in the dark.

� � � � “Sorry, what?” droned a snide Mary Rose. “You’re kinda muffled. Kinda ch-ch-choppy. What do you think, Sophie? Did Mina say the magic word?”

� � � � “That please didn’t sound very pretty to ME,” Sophie giggled.

� � � � “Well, she can’t help THAT.” Mary Rose flashed the smile she’d been practicing for her inevitable coronation as eighth-grade prom queen, high school valedictorian, and then like president or something else important and prestigious. “Maybe WE can help, though! Keep an ugly bookworm shut up in its cocoon for long enough, and it’ll fly free as a BEAUTIFUL butterfly! You should be grateful, Mina!”

� � � � “Let me OUT! Please, just let me OUT!”

� � � � Mina thumped her fists against the door in impotent frustration. Familiar self-loathing struck as Mina realized that she hadn’t used her full strength; her pleas for help had been restrained, too, a far cry from the most her voice could muster. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. She wanted to punch the door so hard it stung. She couldn’t, though. She never could. Even now, fear kept her folded up inside herself—it kept her quiet, shrinking and self-conscious. Why? Why? Why couldn’t she ever shout or dance or speak her heart aloud when she was alone in her bedroom? Why couldn’t she confess a single secret to a diary, if not her parents or Miss Pleezdoo? Tears welled up in Mina’s eyes. She was so tired of being pathetic—of being herself. She wished that Mary Rose’s taunts were true, and she could hide away unseen until she changed to something new... but even with nobody watching, Mina couldn’t find the courage to spread her wings.
�
� � � � Mina’s muffled weeping tied a knot in Mary Rose’s chest. She scowled, too young and proud to meet the guilt that she had earned with anything but sputtering deflection.

� � � � “It’s YOUR fault for tattling on us, Mina!” Mary Rose insisted in a huff, crossing her arms. “It’s your fault we have detention with that creepy freak DuNacht!”

� � � � “I didn’t tattle! You got caught!” Mina protested. “I have detention, too!”�

� � � � “Um, you could have lied for us like last time?” Sophie scolded in reply. “Mary Rose was literally like ‘maybe Mina’s actually cool’? We were literally gonna give you a makeover? We were literally drawing you in art class to, like, plan it?”

� � � � This earned Sophie a death glare from her future fellow Death Cultist, who swiftly scrambled for a less embarrassing angle of attack.

� � � � “You LIKE the library, Mina. We DON’T,” said Mary Rose. “It’s ONLY FAIR that you get EQUAL PUNISHMENT!”

� � � � Mina, in fact, despite enjoying books about the wide world beyond Clayview, dreaded every single moment that she spent inside the library. She and her bullies had been sent to serve their after-school sentence there, in DuNacht’s dusty, cobwebbed domain, thanks to one of Miss Pleezdoo’s less-than-bright ideas. Mary Rose and Sophie had followed Mina out of the library on her state-mandated bathroom break (in fact, her swiftly abandoned attempt to flee the school before the sun set). Then they’d cornered Mina as she scuttled back to detention, spooked by that red-headed woman’s unexpected reappearance, and then tricked her into her current cruel predicament.

� � � � “...I never did a thing to make you hate me,” Mina whimpered in the dark. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

� � � � Only silence answered. Seconds passed. Mina’s tearful eyes went wide.

� � � � “M-Mary Rose?” she whispered. “Sophie?”

� � � � She listened at the door, then fell to all fours, searching desperately for silhouettes in the sliver of setting sunlight underneath it. She found none besides the night’s approach upon an empty hallway.

� � � � “No! NO! Please, please, PLEASE, I didn’t mean it! Please don’t leave me in the dark all by my—”

� � � � Something clicked in the shadows behind Mina: a twig snapped by a stalking creature’s footstep; an arthritic crackle in the joints of something old and gaunt and carapaced, unfolding to the ceiling. It could have been nothing, and might have been anything. Mina’s worst fears filled the void—a stomach far from satiated. She’d seen the storage closet’s shallow depth, before the shadows sealed it shut; she’d felt its space expand forever in the absence of her senses’ reassurance. Now the creature that was lurking in her prison claimed proximity and mystery with equal greed, ignoring logic’s meek objections to the pairing’s contradiction. It was here, a breath away from her, in claustrophobic reach. It was somewhere out there, hiding, far too vast for her to fathom.�

� � � � Mina froze, and held her breath... but her heart still writhed and struggled like a worm strung on a hook. Something hungry licked its lips and slithered closer.

� � � � “...You think she’s faking?” Sophie asked, looking up at Mary Rose. To their ears, Mina hadn’t said a word since their last round of threats. She’d gone completely silent after they had said that she deserved their torment. Neither girl’s mockery had gotten a response for more than a minute now, and both of her bullies were secretly starting to worry.

� � � � “Faking what? Not talking to us?” Mary Rose scoffed uncomfortably, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “That’s just as good as if she—if she, like, just shut up for good for real. Ha ha.”

� � � � “Ha ha,” Sophie repeated, as if echoing some grave religious mantra.

� � � � “What’s so funny?” asked June Summers from behind them, and both girls nearly jumped out of their skin.

Thanks for reading! PLEASE consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon or Ko-fi if you're enjoying my work! Thank you!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � “Would you stop following me already?” June Summers sighed at her someday husband. She’d paused at a crossroads in Clayview Middle School’s dimming halls, which had given Peter Puckett just enough time to catch up to her.

� � � � The young janitor blinked and pushed his glasses back in place. The bookish student June had followed into the school had said the same exact thing to her, right before she’d scrambled off into the dark to shake her tail. June had continued trespassing in search of the girl, wandering the corridors, peeking into empty classrooms—Peter had even watched her pick a lock to force a shortcut. Heck, she’d made him hold her jacket and keep watch! June had very little standing, Peter thought, in asking him to leave like HE was doing something wrong.

� � � � Her confident audacity and low-cut shirt, however, had shorted out his moral circuits, and so a chastened Peter settled for a slightly less righteous method of protest.

� � � � “Your boots,” he said, “are trailing sand. I, uh. I have to mop up after you. Right after you. Behind you.”

� � � � June arched a skeptical eyebrow and gave Peter a judging once-over.

� � � � “...I guess the drool will help with the spitshine,” she scoffed, and strode on straight ahead with just a hint of extra swagger.

� � � � Peter’s “I don’t know what you’re talking about” became a flustered lie halfway through the sentence, and so he trailed off and trailed after her in silence. She looked back a little later, to check if he was staring impolitely, and, satisfied that he still was, June continued her directionless inspection of the school.

� � � � “Hey,” she said a little later, coming to a sudden stop.

� � � � Peter, of course, bumped into her immediately, unable to find traction on the floor his mop had dampened in between them. Before the collision could become a second, belated meet-cute cliché, June, who’d hardly swayed in place when he’d bounced off of her, caught Peter by the collar of his jumpsuit to prevent his klutzy fall.

� � � � “What’s that?” she asked, tugging the ruffled custodian into view of the sight that had stopped her in her tracks.

� � � � June pointed out the window. Beyond a narrow courtyard, recast in red by Clayview’s sunset, a darker wing of the middle school, decrepit and deserted, wrapped back around the building in a smothering embrace.

� � � � “Oh, uh,” Peter mumbled, prying his eyes away from June and her potentially intentional proximity. “That? That’s the oldest section of the school. They call it the Old Annex.”

� � � � “...Why do they call it that?”

� � � � “Huh?” Peter blinked. “Because it’s... the oldest section of the school?”

� � � � “Why’s it called the Old Annex, then? An annex is something that’s added to a building.”

� � � � “Oh. Yeah, that is weird. It definitely subtracts from the building, I’d say.”

� � � � June slowly turned to look at him.��

� � � � “...Oh, sorry,” Peter frowned. “You liked it, didn’t you? You were gonna say you liked it.”

� � � � June sighed and let go of his collar. This guy was unfortunately her type.

� � � � “...I just have an eye for the peculiar,” June shrugged. “Some things have a shine, y’know?” She drifted off to walk the hallway, staring sidelong at the annex through the window. “...Or cast a darker shadow.”

� � � � “Is that, um... why you’re looking for that girl?” asked Peter, falling in behind her once again. With every minute that ticked by, he was discovering new reasons to hope that this June Summers character wasn’t some sort of cop or weirdo kidnapper.

� � � � “Yeah, kinda,” came June’s vague reply. She missed the exasperated glance that Peter exchanged with his mop behind her back. “How to put this?” she mused after a moment, playing with a piercing as she thought. “You know how, sometimes, when you’re nowhere, halfway somewhere, on a bus, or at some pitstop diner, or just walking down the street... you’ll see someone—a stranger—and just know something’s not right?”

� � � � She stopped again. This time, the sunset framed her in a halo with a shadow at its heart.�

� � � � “They’re sad, or scared... alone, or stuck with someone they can’t seem to get away from. Maybe you can’t tell what’s wrong. Maybe they can’t either, or won’t tell you if you ask. There’s a story there, one you can’t read, one that’s none of your business.” June pointed to herself. “That’s my business. Or... I make it my business, I guess, from time to time.”

� � � � “You’re... a private eye?”

� � � � “Huh? No, no. Nobody pays me, I’m just—”

� � � � “A volunteer... vigilante... do-gooder?” Peter asked, tilting his head. “Like... a superhero?”

� � � � For some reason, June had to think about this option before answering.

� � � � “...I just meant that I’m nosy. I poke around a bit, sometimes, when I think that I can help someone. Go the extra mile, see where it leads.”

� � � � “Um. Isn’t that—” Legally dubious? Well-intentioned but definitively ethically precarious? Peter settled on “—er, kinda, like, um, risky? Why, uh. Why do you... do... that?”

� � � � June stared at him for a few silent seconds, her brow furrowed slightly—almost pouting.

� � � � “...’Cause nobody did it for me,” she muttered at last.

� � � � June shrugged and looked away. Her hands withdrew into her pockets, as if to take back something she had shown too much of. When Peter hadn’t said a word some seconds later, June risked a glance and found him gawking at her: curious, even captivated, his puzzled frown tinged with a touch of earnest pity. June sulked and glowered back at him.�

� � � � Clomp, CLOMP!

� � � � She stomped her boots against the tile floor, which startled Peter from his reverie.

� � � � “Look,” June grumbled, gesturing at the ground with her jacket-pocketed penguin flipper limbs. “No more sand left. Not a grain. That mops up our romantic sunset stroll, right? You can turn those puppy dog eyes on some other mess, ’cause there’s no reason to keep hounding ME. Right, Puckett?” She kept the “scram” implicit; as ever, June’s eyebrows sent most of the message she’d intended to deliver.

� � � � Peter looked around, then scratched his head and shrugged.

� � � � “...Go the extra mile? See where it leads?” he offered, giving June a sheepish smile.

� � � � June gaped at him in grumpy befuddlement. Then her warming cheeks informed her that his echoed line had actually worked on her—a report she wasn’t pleased with, as the choice had not been made with her approval.

� � � � “Fine,” she said in a huff, crossing her arms and marching on. “I’m usually lost and always on the move, though, so don’t expect it to lead anywhere you WANT it to.” June’s ponytail whipped aside to make way for a scrutinizing squint.

� � � � Peter scrambled to give her a thumbs up, as if his wide-eyed nod was not enough, which caused his mop to teeter over. He dove to stop its fall, catching it at a kissable angle like a starlet he had dipped to strike a movie poster pose.

� � � � Peter blinked at June, then at the mop, then back at June.�

� � � � “...She means nothing to me,” he said, which made June snort despite herself.

� � � � The mood was broken, however, when a set of muffled voices echoed down the darkened hallway.

Had to keep the art for this one simple since my schedule's still packed! Thanks for understanding! Barrister will bear the burden by not appearing in this page at all.

Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi to literally buy me time! Thank you very much for your support and your readership!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � Johnny’s fists made short work of the Student Council’s first wave. Black hats flew high into the air with every uppercut he struck, an early graduation for the school’s most shameless strivers. Johnny caught a pair of nunchucks by the chain, instantly welding its links (through grip strength alone, no doubt) into an inflexible morass. A blinding blow seared straight through one kid’s sunglasses. Johnny punched another guy real hard and then that guy fell down. Not every shot was cinematic, but they floored his target audience—one smash hit was followed by its sequel, then an unnecessary spin off some nerd’s back.

� � � � KTONG! A whirling roundhouse outhammered Barrister’s gavel, sending it sailing from his hand. A wooden mallet couldn’t hope to hold a candle to his mighty, metal—

� � � � KTING! KTANG! KTONG!

� � � � With every strike, a fire flared in Johnny’s chest, an anger that could not find time to cool. He’d been trying to be different, maybe, a better, more compassionate sort of bully. Here he was, though, in a fight again. He didn’t quite know why, but Johnny cared less every second.�

� � � � Everybody knew he was a bad kid; they could always tell, had always known, since he could walk and talk and shout and make a scene. His dad knew, and his teachers knew, and his classmates knew. They told him all the time. Sometimes Johnny wanted to prove them wrong. Sometimes, he did everything he could to prove them right. It didn’t make a lick of difference. He would blunder into brawls and bad grades and detention even when he didn’t do his darndest to deserve them, shredding homework when it hurt his head, stealing lunch money when he was bored or hungry, making fun of dorks like Jeff to get a laugh from his—

� � � � KTONG!!

� � � � A lucky counterpunch sent Johnny stumbling back. He shook his head to fix his doubled vision. As he steadied himself, a lull in the fighting gave Johnny the chance to survey the battlefield for the first time since the clash had broken out.

� � � � “R-resisting arrest... is the highest crime of all...!” a battered Barrister groaned from the ground. It was such a serious crime, in fact, that it was often the sole charge brought to bear against the Biddle School’s worst rulebreakers. The affliction was insidious—everyone LOOKED innocent until you tackled them and forced them into handcuffs. Then they’d show their TRUE face: furious, disheveled, locked in SHACKLES like a CRIMINAL; the transformation made Barrister shudder every time. The few suspects that didn’t turn when they were apprehended were charged with criminal negligence instead: neglecting to commit a crime, and thereby wasting precious Student Council resources.

� � � � All around their Black Saint miniboss, Student Council adds had ragdolled in strange shapes, threatening to despawn as the courtyard reached its object limit. Still more mobs were waiting to replace them, however, and Bobblehead’s health bar had appeared onscreen for phase two of the fight. Johnny was exhausted. He didn’t know how much more brawling he could handle on his own.

� � � � KTONK-KCHUNK!

� � � � Johnny briefly felt a pang of hope, thinking that reinforcements might have arrived for him, as a heavy object barreled through the courtyard’s double doors. The large rectangle wasn’t Ollie, however—it was a TV on a cart wheeled in by still more Student Councilors.

� � � � “HYECK-heh HEH SKKNNRRRT!” Troll hacked disgustingly. She’d appeared in a flash of static on the TV’s screen. The Tenth Black Saint Councilor-General was so skilled at hacking (the kind that wrecked computers and the sort that retched up snot) that she was able to worm her way into an unplugged television that didn’t have an internet connection. Troll scanned the scene from her monitor, smirking at her fallen Student Council comrades. “Not a bad K/D for a bully made of MEAT and BONE! Heh HEH HYUURRK! You’re every megabit the DINOSAUR I thought you’d be, JOHNNY JHONNY: as FIERCE as you are DOOMED TO GO EXTINCT!”

� � � � “...I’d rather be a T-REX than a TV,” Johnny grunted, failing to understand that the device was not Troll’s body. “You wouldn’t be the first I put my fist through.”

� � � � “How like a LUDDITE, LOW-IQ DEGENEROID,” scoffed Troll. “You can MUTE THE MESSENGER, but you can’t BLOCK the TOPIC’S TREND! The future belongs to CYBERBULLIES, not you and your OBSOLETE gang of offline goons!”

� � � � “Say that to my face and not through screen and see what happens,” Johnny snorted.

� � � � “That’s the BEAUTY of it, Johnny: I don’t HAVE to!” snickered Troll. “With just a few clicks, I can bully ANYONE from ANYWHERE! Embarrassing photos! Anonymous hatemail! Your digital footprint, 3D-printed and delivered by a proxy paid with cryptocurrency! The world’s ALREADY cyberpunk, and ANALOG punks like YOU are nothing more than WASTED SPACE that needs DEFRAGGING!”

� � � � “Make a meme or somethin’, dang. I don’t need your geek philosophy’s whole wiki.” Johnny dug a finger in his ear to purge it of Troll’s residue. “Call yourself whatever kinda hyperlunk you want. No self-respectin’ bully throws their hat in with the friggin’ STUDENT COUNCIL.”

� � � � “Heh-HEH hyeck! I respect NO ONE—not even MYSELF!” Troll powered through a sea of sympathetic looks from Johnny and her fellow Student Councilors. “TH-THE STUDENT COUNCIL’S RAMPAGE SERVES MY ENDS! I’m an ACCELERATIONIST! Look it up! Or better yet... LOOK UP AT THIS!”

� � � � Troll’s image flashed away, and shocking footage took its place upon the TV screen. RJ, Max, and Lisa on a perp-walk through the Biddle School. Ollie chained up like King Kong in an interrogation room. Diva from the Drama Club cosplaying Stephen for some reason, getting fake-beat-up by Roxy from the Rock Band until they just started fully attacking each other for real. Johnny’s eyes went wide.

� � � � “Heh-HEH hehck...” sneered Troll. “The MIGHTY ALPHA BULLY of the BIDDLE SCHOOL, bested by some PIXELS on a SCREEN! I think you know the toll this Troll will force your friends to pay... if the gruffest GOAT won’t join them down below! Heh HEH heh-HURKK!!”�

� � � � Bobblehead stared with spiteful bloodlust at the Black Saints’ Number Ten. This was not the bushido way.

� � � � “Y-you heard her!” sputtered Barrister. “Surrender willingly, and join your fellow derelicts in OVERDUE DETENTION... or drag your friends down WITH you, into DEEPER TROUBLE STILL, as we take you into custody by FORCE!”

� � � � Johnny’s fists fell slack without a moment’s hesitation.

� � � � “Finally! Subdue him!” Barrister demanded, and the grunts who were still standing swarmed their unresisting prey.

Thanks for reading! As ever, i would super appreciate it if you supported Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi. Also, over on my portfolio blog, I've been posting some more art recently. Check it out! Thanks again!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � Ka-POW! Johnny’s fist struck the last goon in a wave of Student Councilors, adding yet another dork to the detritus strewn about the hallway’s floor. He stood still for a moment, panting in the battle’s aftermath... but the air was far too hot for him to truly catch his breath.�

� � � � “What friggin’ gives, man?!” Johnny snarled in frustration. A blink was all it took to miss the swirling sparks he’d spat.

� � � � Despite the groans and moans of the defeated all around him, Johnny could still hear the wild chaos he had fled just a few halls away. Out of nowhere, it had seemed, a bunch of kids he KNEW were total squares had started breaking every single school rule on the books. The Student Council had swept in to detain them immediately, as if they’d been ready and waiting in ambush, and Johnny had been mowing down insufferable snitches ever since.

� � � � Try as he might, though, he couldn’t seem to break free from the onslaught. Every time he got away, or tried to hide and get his head straight, a new random encounter would come sprinting from the shadows. It was like those Student Council freaks were—

� � � � FzzZZT.

� � � � The mechanical whirr of a rotating security camera drew Johnny’s burning vision to the ceiling.

� � � � “Hyurck-heh-HEH HEHK! Priority target doxxed again!” a tinny teen girl voice sneered in delight, emerging from the PA system and a classroom’s old computer simultaneously. Troll’s greasy finger had slipped onto the wrong key, broadcasting her transmission to the bully she’d been tracking by mistake. “Dropping deets in the SUPERIOR groupchat! All units, MOVE IN like my mom’s new boyfriend: WITHOUT warning and WITH UNCONSIDERED PREJUDICE!”

� � � � Johnny beat his chest and lobbed a few rocks at the camera in prehominid frustration, then took off down the hallway on all fours. A flood of footsteps echoed from behind him, herding him from one turn to the next.

� � � � WHAM!!

� � � � Johnny crashed through double doors into the blinding heat of Bayview’s burning sunshine. He rolled and then slid to a simian stop, scraping molten streaks into the blacktop with his fingers. His frenzied glare whipped from one brick wall to another, and another, until he realized with dismay that he was not, in fact, outside. A courtyard at the heart of Bayview Biddle School surrounded him, the summer sky above his head his only fleeting taste of freedom... and that wasn’t all. The space was filled with Student Council thrall monitors, a pack of rabid teacher’s pets allowed to roam the school without a leash. Their ranks closed to block the door that Johnny had just crashed through—the courtyard’s only exit.

� � � � “Well, well, well!” a snooty voice said from behind him.�

� � � � Johnny snorted smoke and turned to face his newest challenger. Barrister, the highest-ranking member of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, stepped forward from the crowd, gavel in hand.

� � � � “One wrong turn, and the running of the bullies sends a prize cow charging straight into our bullpen!” Barrister let out a shrill little scoff, looking Johnny up and down. “I’ll give you your flowers, Arch-DUPE Ferdinand, before this STING, my clever ambush, maketh me your matador: you rampaged in your labyrinth for longer than my men should have allowed... but cowed beyond your maze, thou misbegotten minotaur, you’re nothing but a bare, bullheaded Cretan!”

� � � � “Whuh? Man, I don’t know that Geek Mythology junk,” Johnny grumbled. He cracked his knuckles. “Sick tiny hammer though, bro. You like whack-a-mole? ’Cause I can see one on your FACE that still needs THUMPIN’.” He smacked his fists together.

� � � � Barrister smirked.

� � � � “Incredible,” he said, and a single wounded tear fell from his eye. “Efficient. Ruthless. You truly are a bully of unprecedented skill.” He dabbed his face dry with his powdered wig, which doubled as a way to reapply the powder on his cheek. “A dying breed, as Troll oft claims. All the more reason... for you to live your final days out in captivity.”

� � � � He struck his gavel on the hollow head of a Student Council squire. On cue, the wall of soldiers parted, and Bobblehead, the Beast of Bayview Biddle School, emerged from the crowd like a gladiator, stalking steadily towards Johnny as their mascot eyes shone bright with feral menace.

� � � � “You should consider it an honor,” Barrister proclaimed, “that the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals have sent their Number One and Number Two, their mightiest duo, to arrest you!”

� � � � “They shoulda sent their Number One and Number Two straight down the drain. It’s SWIRLIES for you freaks once I’m done wipin’ out your mighty DEUCE... and ALL the DINGLEBERRIES you brought with you!!” Johnny roared as he charged into battle.

� � � � “S-scatalogical, illogical degenerate!” Barrister sputtered. “Whatever happened to civil debate?!” With effort, Barrister stiffened his upper lip and readied his gavel for combat. A firebrand this dangerous, this wild and inflammatory, had to be SNUFFED OUT IMMEDIATELY... before his scathing burns could reach the soft ears of the President! “STUDENT COUNCIL... ATTAAAAACK!!”

Thanks for reading! Support Paranatural on Patreon and/or Ko-fi! See you next week!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � “Well, well, WELL! What do we have HERE?”

� � � � Vice Principal Devilora Demonelle DuNacht unfolded to a ceiling-scraping stoop within the School Store’s dimlit doorframe, observing the students beneath her like delicious earthworms writhing on a sidewalk.

� � � � “Naughty, NAUGHTY children!” Devilora sneered, wagging a skeletal finger at the cowering crowd below. “Hiding in the cupboard, spoiled rotten by debauchery, hosting pathologic subcultures assured to spread corruption like the PLAGUE! Thank greater goodness that it’s not too late to AMPUTATE the limb that bears the boil!”

� � � � “This time, you’ll save Europe, and they won’t burn all your friends like they did in your Middle Ages,” Max compulsively quipped. A gallows was a stage of sorts, and he would get the last laugh if it killed him, which it almost surely would.

� � � � “Watch your TONGUE, you little brat!” the Vice Principal hissed back at him. “I’ve never ONCE had friends!”

� � � � “Oh, dearie me!” A pale and ruffled-looking Principal Pleezdoo frowned from behind the bars of an elegant birdcage, which was dangling on a chain from Devilora’s crooked talons. “That simply can’t be true! I’ve endured—er, endeared you for some time now, Devi, haven’t I? And I’ve come to abhor—er, to adore you in return! What are we, Devilora, if not friends?”

� � � � “You’re my sweet little canary, Posy dearest, here to issue final warnings to the minors in this noxious vein of underground delinquency!” Devilora shook the principal’s enclosure, which was lined with paperwork instead of newspaper. “Now sign more DETENTION WARRANTS! I like to observe legal formalities for their pleasantly inevitable deference to the will of NAKED POWER!”

� � � � “...Well, I may quibble with the tenor of your methods,” Pleezdoo sighed, “but I can’t claim that you don’t get results!”�

� � � � She’d been banned from making claims of any kind, factual or financial, by recent Student Council legislation. Principal Pleezdoo was a little iffy on the wisdom of granting Vice Principal DuNacht unlimited wartime powers for the rest of her life, but since it was all perfectly legal, there was nothing much that she could do except hope Devi died soon. This was the healthy ebb and flow of functional democracy. Principal Pleezdoo hummed a pleasant tune as she set about signing more warrants, opening her cage to hand the last stack to her captor before returning to the work within her permanent forever-prison.

� � � � “HEH-heh heh heh HYECK! Fly, my pretties! Round up EVERY SINGLE RULEBREAKER!” the Vice Principal cackled. She threw the wanted posters she’d been handed high into the air, and they began to flutter down like criminal confetti. On her signal, a wave of traitor bullies crashed into their loyal counterparts while Jazz and Roxy buffed them with their best bardic support spells.

� � � � “On what CHARGE am I being DETAINED?!” Max roared righteously over the ruckus, struggling to wriggle free from Diva’s cuffs. “I know my RIGHTS and NONEXISTENT WRONGS!” Only Lisa and Suzy had solid proof that he was the infamous bus jumper, and their BLACKMAIL meant that all his other crimes had been committed under duress, an exculpatory circumstance if ever one had—

� � � � “THEFT of SCHOOL PROPERTY!” grinned the Vice Principal. She jabbed a bony digit at his baseball bat.

� � � � “What? This isn’t—” Max blinked. “Oh. Uh. Actually yeah you got me there.”

� � � � Max’s haunted bat sprung from his grip and into Devilora’s, as if tugged by an invisible string, as Diva made the most dramatic arrest that she could muster.

� � � � Lisa, meanwhile, stood in numb silence as the School Store she had worked so hard to build fell down around her. The contrast that her stillness struck between her and the chaos of the Student Council sting, however, was the opposite of camouflage. Devilora turned to her as if she’d caught the scent of blood (a sense that evolution might have wanted her to wield, though a minority of scientists dissented to suggest she used her nose to reach the bug juice at the bottom of old pitcher plants).

� � � � Lisa shuddered. Many adults at Bayview Biddle School cast longer, darker shadows than they should have—she’d seen so many secrets, from a distance, through her monitors and wiretaps—but Vice Principal DuNacht was more unsettling than all of them combined. Sometimes, only sometimes, it felt like she could see through Lisa’s lies, through the persona she presented... as if a second pair of eyes was watching, too, while the Vice Principal was near, circumventing her defenses from an angle drowned in darkness. Lisa sensed it now more than she ever had before. An earworm of a song, a pleasant tune, crawled out from underneath the room’s cacophony. It was slowly getting louder, slowly nesting in her mind. It reached a whining high note, like a kettle’s steaming screech, like the whistling of a missile whipping straight towards Lisa’s head—

� � � � “Lisa! Watch out!”�

� � � � Violet leapt over the bar in flawless dressage form despite her current lack of horse. She tackled Lisa out of the path of a wayward boomerang hurled by an eccentric bully warrior, and the pair collapsed in a heap behind the counter.

� � � � “HEY! Are you okay, Lisa?! Snap out of it!”

� � � � Lisa blinked, then climbed a blurry pigtail to her best friend’s worried face.

� � � � “...Violet,” she said. A wall that she relied on was repaired with her next blink. “I’m fine.”

� � � � Violet groaned, an exaggerated sigh of relief, as she rolled off of her friend. Shouting and fistfights and clashing bayonets were filling the School Store with a deafening disharmony, but Violet and Lisa had found a brief pocket of peace behind the bar.

� � � � “I SWEAR,” Violet growled, “there’s SOMETHING IN THE WATER in this school... and if there ISN’T, I might PUT IT THERE to DO THE WORLD A FAVOR!”

� � � � “You’re hurt,” said Lisa, glancing at Violet’s skinned knee. She must have scraped it on the floorboards when she’d tackled her.

� � � � “What?” Violet looked at the scrape and scoffed. “Who cares?”

� � � � Lisa didn’t answer. Not out loud.�

� � � � “Look, Lisa, we have to, like, get out of here—”

� � � � The creaking of a trapdoor drew Violet’s attention back to Lisa.

� � � � “I quite agree. Quickly, Violet. Hide down here. You go first, and I’ll—”

� � � � “Don’t you dare,” Violet scowled back at her. “You go first, and I’ll catch up? Like, are you kidding me? You’re so obviously going to shut the hatch the second that I’m down there!” She crossed her arms. “You’re NOT as good a LIAR as you think you are, Lisa.”

� � � � Lisa smiled at her friend.

� � � � “...I think it’s very sweet that you believe that.” She took Violet’s hands and gently untangled her crossed arms, which softened Violet’s scowl as if they’d been a ribbon tied to keep her frown in place. Lisa squeezed her dear friend’s hands a little tighter. “Listen, Violet. I’m the mastermind. They’d look for me, and find you, if I suddenly went missing. Just stay until it’s safe. I’ll be in touch.” Her smile widened, curling to a playful, cunning smirk. “Trust me. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve,” she said. She’d lied.

� � � � Violet searched her smile for the long span of a few uncertain seconds, then finally relented with a sigh.

� � � � “...Okay.”

� � � � Lisa chased a flicker of melancholy from the surface of her mask. Violet was really very sweet, and far too innocent by half. If she could see how desperate Lisa really was, how needy, petty, selfish and repulsive she’d become in secret while her friend grew ever brighter, Violet’s trust, her worry and affection, would doubtlessly unravel in an instant.

� � � � “Just don’t say anything INCRIMINATING without a LAWYER PRESENT!” Violet advised her, poking Lisa as she started down the ladder.

� � � � “Understood,” said Lisa, smiling mischievously. “I’ll make sure that there are lawyers listening when I confess to all the crimes I love to do.” She shut the hatch before Violet could finish rolling her eyes to scold her.�

� � � � Lisa’s face fell with the trapdoor. It fell further as the shadow of Vice Principal DuNacht rose up across the bar, swallowing her whole within its darkness.

Paranatural is back from its break! I hope you all had a restful few weeks. I'm excited to hit the ground running in 2026, and I hope it's an exciting year for all of you, Paranatural, and the rest of my work! I hope you'll help me spread the word about this story as it trundles on. Thank you, and thanks for reading!

Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi!

~

[Transcript]

� � � � From her seat upon the School Store's spotlit stage, Roxy, Number Six of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, tossed her hair back to reveal a blase sneer.

� � � � "Heyyy School STORE! What's up, you brainless barfly barfbags?!" she called out to the crowd.�

� � � � Three dozen bullies turned to face her, rancorous that she had ruined the pleasant island vibe. Lisa's eyes flared with goth intensity, one patron whirled out one of those flippy little butterfly knives, and another student flashed the first inch of a gleaming wakizashi.

� � � � "Thanks to some recent legislation, you may or may not have a right to remain silent," Roxy smirked, strumming on her guitar, "but either way, I wanna hear you losers MAKE SOME NOISE!" Her amp screeched as she reared back, slamming out an earsplitting riff.

� � � � Students flinched across the Barfe. The weakest toadies—the grunts who clung to bigger bullies like remora, adding shrill "yeahs" and "you-tell-'ems" to their bosses' every insult—were instantly felled, collapsing backwards from their seats or dissipating into dust.

� � � � "Not to add to the FEEDBACK you're already getting," Max shouted over the commotion, "but as a connoisseur of LOUD, ATONAL MUSIC, you do not have what it takes to be ENDEARINGLY UNTALENTED!"

� � � � Roxy laughed, flashing devil horns, then a fleeting devil pitchfork, and then just its middle prong.

� � � � "All the best art is offensive to the senses!"

� � � � "Your IDEOLOGY is BORING!" Max yelled back at her.

� � � � "You're a masterpiece, then, Roxy: there's no sense you DON'T offend, you monotone-deaf DWEEB!" a random bully shouted, instantly upstaging Max—a keen reminder he was new to the community, and still had much to learn.

� � � � Undeterred by the crowd's jeering, the band onstage with Roxy tore away their civilian disguises, revealing badges and black-and-white uniforms: a Student Council strike team.�

� � � � "Surprise, daddy-o," hummed Jazz, the ninth seat of the Black Saints and the first chair of Jazz Band (a club that had renamed itself after her, its soulful star, in admiration of her talent, though the honor hadn't technically changed anything on paper). Jazz rose from the drum kit she'd been lightly tapping with a brush made from the soft mane of a grieving Shetland pony. "This whole time," she said, pointing at the tuba she'd been trapped in since The Incident, "I wasn't actually a drummer."

� � � � "Who CARES?!" whined Violet, covering her ears to block out Roxy's screeching music.

� � � � "But I can jive with beats, too, when the brass won't drown the blues," Jazz crooned. She stared wistfully up into the stage lights, then squinted, failed once again by her tiny useless sunglasses (the listing had been literal when it claimed they were made to fit "cool cats"). "Like, it's just a matter of what moves me, you dig? The drums are hot to trot out on occasion, but the tuba's in my veins. As in it's physically entangled with a couple major arteries."

� � � � "I do hope that you have the brass to take a couple notes to heart, then, Jazz," sighed Lisa, radiating menace. "Just like you did when timing your off-rhythm cymbal-playing, when you stepped through my doors... you picked the wrong bar to crash."

� � � � Lisa snapped her fingers, and a platoon of Bayview Biddle School's worst bullies rose to defend their den of thieves. Across the room, a dozen different Code of Conduct violations occurred in tandem as the teeming legion drew all sorts of dangerous melee weaponry. Lisa smiled. She was not alone.

� � � � Roxy laughed and shook her head (in truth, she was headbanging horizontally and in slow motion, a subtle but significant distinction).

� � � � "See, the trouble with buying all your friends, babe... is that someone can outbid you."

� � � � This time, Jazz snapped even louder (it was a skill that she'd perfected), and half the room that had risen to defend the School Store suddenly turned on their fellow bullies. Instantly, the remaining patrons were surrounded, driven back against the bar. Fresh Student Council badges gleamed upon the sneering traitors' chests—they'd all been deputized.�

� � � � "That Starchman Scrip you peddle can't compare to cold hard cash," Roxy snickered, strumming out a mocking dirge on her guitar. "Your ugly mugger minions were already pleased as punch to pick a fight over spare change. All it took to make 'em bite the hand that feeds 'em cruddy cocktails... is five bucks from the bake sale budget EACH." Her song became a patriotic anthem played off-key. "Every rebel is a sell-out in the making... but MAN, that asking price! Shows how little you're worth to your so-called friends, huh, Pentagraham?"

� � � � Lisa bit her lip. She wouldn't show a hint of what she felt. It was a skill that she'd perfected.�

� � � � "You couldn't sell out a show with three seats and supportive parents, you weird fake punk JERK! No wonder you're so keen to cuff yourself a captive audience! Keep dreaming, though—all future famous rock stars pay for followers, I'm sure!"

� � � � Lisa turned to find a red-faced Violet scowling, arms folded, furious, as ever, on behalf of her best friend. Lisa smiled, grateful for her incandescent presence. She was always grateful for her. How could she feel lonely with a friend like Violet at her side? She should always have been grateful, and accepted what she'd already been given—what she didn't dare to risk by wanting more. She looked from Violet to the phalanx of protectors still remaining, then to Max, and felt a soothing rush of solidarity.

� � � � "Maxwell," she said, smiling at him. "What a pleasant treat to see you standing with us on the wrong side of the law. Normally it takes my wiles longer to corrupt nice boys like you."

� � � � "I am NOT a nice boy," Max scoffed, rising from his seat. "I'm like famously mildly mean like all the time." He slung his haunted bat over his shoulder. "Plus no one's offered me five dollars yet. If they did, though"—Max paused, waiting for the auction to begin, but he was evidently worth less than a cupcake to the Council—"I'D SAY NO," he growled, offended by their undisguised disinterest in his mercenary services. "Just for the RECORD. Unlike YOU domesticated sheeple-dog capitulaters, I have actual CONVICTIONS—"

� � � � "Not yet you don't," said Ollie, slapping handcuffs around Max's cast.

� � � � "HUH?!" Max sputtered in shock. "What do you think you're DOING, you big—AAAAAH WHAT THE—EW!!!" he screeched. Max had turned around to find himself flanked by Number Seven of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, Diva, wearing Ollie's outfit and a bald cap.

� � � � "Looking for your precious bouncer?" smirked the Drama Club's best actor. "How do you think we got past all your safeguards and security? You've been talking to ME, DIVA, this WHOLE TIME. I replaced Ollie Oop hours ago."

� � � � "No you didn't," Max said flatly. "That's not true." He was a terrible improv partner.

� � � � "The hardest part was NOT ATTRACTING ATTENTION FOR ONCE," scoffed Diva, tossing phantom hair fully enclosed beneath her bald cap. "Once I'd CREPT UP BEHIND HIM, all it took was a pair of headphones and a few seconds of the most snoozeworthy stageplay ever recorded—‘Waiting for Godot in Total Silence in the Rain'—and Ollie Oop was SLEEPING LIKE THE BABY HE RESEMBLES."

� � � � "Sure," said Max. "Okay."

� � � � "Hey, that's a cheaper trick than mine," snickered Roxy, grinning at her fellow Student Councilor's ridiculous disguise. "I had to blow like eighty bucks. All that your scheme cost you was your dignity, huh, Diva?"

� � � � "...Like you're not ONE BAD BREAKUP and an AWFUL EMO ALBUM from a BUZZCUT you can't ROCK, like, HALF this good!" Diva hurled her bald cap at Roxy, which landed in the mouth of Jazz's tuba with a halting cartoon squeak.

� � � � Before Lisa's dwindling rebel faction could exploit their foes' infighting, the doors of the School Store creaked slowly open. Hardly any light crept in around the new arrivals, so vast and all-consuming was the shadow they had cast into the room.