What hundred page hitball arc would be complete without one, maybe two Hijacks. Thank you for reading! Support Paranatural on Patreon!

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[Transcript]

        With all the force and wetness of a loofah thrown against a shower door, Hijack hurled himself into the wall of Cody’s room for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time.

        “That was the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time you’ve attempted to phase through that wall,” said Hijack, peering condescendingly over the newspaper he was perusing.

        “SO?!” shouted Hijack, wiping tears welling up in his eye. “WHO’S COUNTING??”

        “Obviously I am.” Hijack shook his half of the head they’d once shared and returned to his close reading of the reactionary themes in Family Circus, which was proving QUITE intellectually stimulating. “Honestly. You should use what little brain you have left for once. Mm, but one must halve the right to remain scient when under arrest, I suppose—this unjust house arrest included—and thus it falls upon myself to share with you the logic that you lost with your left lobe. May I remind you of the definition of insanity—”

        “Shut UP!! Or would you rather I remind YOU that our right hook’s always been stronger, you dinky doofus?!” Hijack raised a frond quivering with emotion.

        “Dinky doofus?” the other Hijack scoffed. “I thought YOUR side was meant to be creative.”

        “IT CAN BE DESTRUCTIVE TOO!”

        “...Ha! Tell that to the wall.”

        They’d been bickering like this for what felt like hours (to Hijack’s right half) and what logically must have been at least more than one hundred and nineteen minutes (to Hijack’s left half). Cody had finally stopped keeping watch over them in the late afternoon, claiming that he had “some shopping to do before the PTA meeting” or some other boring errand like that, and the Hijacks schemed to break free in his absence

        Every corner of the young vampire’s room proved infuriatingly tangible to the spirits, however, as if his whole house was possessed, and an attempt to hijack a stray spider’s body and crawl through the cracks had ended in utter disaster. Try as they might, the bisected halves of Hijack could not coordinate their movement nor regulate their veiny strength, and they’d departed their departed host with it divided, much as they were, into equal itsy bits. While his port counterpart stayed stern, starboard Hijack had wept a sea of tears over the critter’s newly quadrupedal ghosts, and all hope of further teamwork had gone out the window (as both Hijacks surely would have, if Cody’s sunless room had any single such escape route).

        “How can you be SO COLD?” right-hand Hijack whimpered, simultaneously expressing himself through interpretive dance. “Mom was already SO UPSET about Sockpuppy going missing when the ghost train went berserk... imagine how she must feel about US! Her FAVORITE KID!” A great sniff slurped a glob of gray matter back up into his nonexistent nose. “Even if there’s no sense in trying to escape... we have to TRY! IT JUST MAKES SENSE! To anyone that has a HEART, at least!”

        Leftward Hijack rolled his eye. “If either of us ever had such organs, they’d be on the left side with me now. You’re the right half—try to be less wrong about all of your assertions.” He folded his arm impatiently. “For example, what is your attachment to this ‘going missing’ hypothesis? Doctor Zarei herself deduced that the original homunculus prototype is deceased. Sockpuppy simply could not survive the spirit he’s controlling becoming a grudge. He would be absorbed! Like a sock into the dark depths of a dryer!” Hijack took a moment to savor this inexplicable laundry phenomenon—there were yet so many frontiers for brave scientists to conquer! “Think, my wetter half,” he said, newly invigorated by the thrill of nontrivial pursuit. “Were that not a flaw in Sockpuppy’s design, there would be no logical need for the rest of us to be born in the first place!”

        “I WISH YOU WERE NEVER BORN IN THE FIRST PLACE!!” cried Hijack, flying off the handle and across the room to punch him in the face.

        “OW! What the—OUCH! Hey, cut it out, man! We had very sophisticated ideas about—OOF!—the proper use of violence! FINE, how about I BITE you, how would you ILLOGICALLY REACT to THAT?!”

        They continued on this way, colliding like a pair of fuzzy dice bound together on the bumpy road of life, until a subtle click stole both brain boys’ attention

        Cody had shut the door to his room behind him, and with it had closed off the Hijacks’ last chance to escape.

        “I’m back!” he said, and smiled with a tranquil cheer they’d both learned not to trust. “Oh, good! You’re getting along. That’s gonna be important going forward.”

        If either left or right brain had a clever or creative quip to counter with, it never reached the Hijacks’ split lips, which now hung slack and speechless at the stunning sight before them. Not only had Cody come back bearing gifts—for indeed his arms were spilling over with a flood of treats and toys—but among their ample number was an alabaster cube. Three simple letters dispelled any lasting shred of doubt: Cody held a yet-unboxed, like-new Nintendo Wii.

        For the first time in a long time, both Hijacks briefly shared a single thought.

        “Oh, this?” Cody asked, reading their silence. “Yeah, this thing should help with my plan, too. Jeff says gaming’s all about coordination!” Davy’s son, the Student Council’s shadow-shrouded president, the boy who’d sliced Hijack in two with his dad’s haunted hook, tilted his head innocently. The smile that he flashed next lacked the slightest hint of fangs. “So! Which one of you’s the Wiimote and which one should be the Nunchuck?”

        In an instant, with a cross-eyed leer, the Hijacks’ unity was rent asunder and their brawl began anew.

        “...Looks like I have my work cut out for me after all,” said Cody, letting out a perfect sitcom sigh.