*EDIT* This next page needs more time after a busy week for me! It will go up next week, thanks for waiting in the meantime!

Rest in peace (?) funny gamer dogs. Thank you for reading! Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon, so I can continue to make this story for you all! Thank you!

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[Transcript]

        “LIFEGIVER LASER!!”

        Coach Oop returned to soggy consciousness in a burst of bright red light. Like a sleeper woken from a pleasant dream, he lurched forward with a gasp, all sorrowful regret—for a short time, as a hitball, he’d been something he respected.

        “RAZOR REX,” said Razor Rex, using her own lordly name in vain. “IS THAT WHAT YOUR FACE ALWAYS LOOKED LIKE, BROTHER APE? NO WONDER I MADE YOU WEAR A MASK.”

        Coach Oop was still punch-drunk, his breathing ragged and uneven. The room was blurry; people in suits and robes and skull masks stood around him in a circle, trading whispers, holding thin flutes of champagne. With his only eye that wasn’t swollen shut, Oop followed his goddess’s shadow to the foot of her throne, then climbed her flowing robes up to her face.

        “He’s normally more PINK than black and blue, your wretchedness,” purred Sister Cat. She was perched on Razor Rex’s lap, gazing down at Coach Oop with a pompous, feline sneer. “Perhaps now that Ape’s shown you his true colors, he’ll have the decency to BLUSH, and then we’ll get to see a happy medium—I know I’d rather see THAT than this SAD ONE! AH-ha ha HA!”

        Razor Rex pet Baxter like the lapcat of a villain in a James Bond movie, which everyone thought was honestly a little bit much.

        “I COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER MYSELF, SISTER CAT,” the goddess lied. She totally could have said it better, because she had a beautiful voice, like a dying pterodactyl, and because Oop wasn’t a medium so the wordplay didn’t quite work. It was bad form to undermine your flunkies’ dunks, though, and she’d sound like a huge nerd correcting a math teacher, so Razor Rex just went with it instead. “I, TOO, WOULD RATHER NOT SEE THIS PATHETIC SIGHT A MOMENT LONGER...”

        Razor Rex’s outstretched fingers lit like candles, like a blue flame birthday cake for a very creepy ten-year-old.

        “W-wait!” Coach Oop wheezed. “M-my Empress of Entropy! My Liege of Last Breaths! I... I remain your loyal—AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!”

        Coach Oop screamed as a blast of fire swallowed him whole. Razor Rex’s mad laughter and the gasps of her faithful filled the air, their circled shadows cast like pitch-black paper dolls upon the vast walls of the ballroom. A wide-eyed Sister Cat leaned forward in her seat, licking her lips. This was so much more than she’d expected—

        Coach Oop squinted at his hands through blinding blue. It wasn’t pain and heat that overwhelmed him, but a chilling, soothing bliss. He watched scrapes burn free from his skin and robes, felt his bruises smooth and bones ease back in place. The flames subsided. He was healed.

        “...Y-you friggin’—” Oop gasped, mouth agape. “I-I mean... you have frigging healed me, my Dark Demiurge. I don’t deserve this mercy—”

        “OOPS,” said Razor Rex.

        Coach Oop blinked.

        “ER, I MEAN. OOP’S... LIFE... IS, UH. IS SPARED. YES, THAT’S RIGHT! REJOICE!” Razor Rex shook her scythe at her cultists. “REJOICE OR DIE!!”

        The cult rejoiced for their lives, and for their brother Oop’s. Sister Cat chose death, it seemed, for she was mourning Oop’s survival, but Razor Rex was too swept up in the applause of her flock to pay Rose Baxter’s pouting any mind.

        “I’VE LOST ENOUGH PAWNS LATELY,” shouted the Death Cult’s goddess, blowing smoke from her fingers. “SUCH AS MY FUNNY GAMER DOGS THAT CANNOT DIE. I KNOW MOST OF YOU COULDN’T SEE THEM, BUT THEY REALLY LIVENED UP THE PLACE. WHAT WITH THEIR INFINITE LIVES, AND HOW THEY WOULDN’T FREAK OUT WHEN I KILLED THEM LIKE YOU LOSERS.” Razor Rex’s glowing white eyes lolled down in Oop’s direction. “...BUT DEATH ISN’T THE ONLY WAY THAT YOU CAN LOSE A LOYAL MINION... IS IT, BROTHER APE?”

        Coach Oop felt shame and terror shiver up his spine.

        “WHAT WAS IT THAT YOU ASKED FOR,” Razor Rex mused, “WHEN YOU FIRST BECAME MY SERVANT?”

        Years ago, the same half-lethal punch that had ended Oop’s boxing career had left him seeing stars. One in particular had lingered, orbiting his head with truly tireless persistence—its happy songs would torment him through college and beyond. Mister Sun was only one of many burdens, however, that Oop would have to bear. He was a dead man walking, he discovered, a ghost born too soon, trapped in flesh. Try as he might, after that, to start a normal life and settle down, he could never seem to reach the bottom. He’d never hit the mat after that punch. Further and further down he fell, pursued by defeat, by tragedy and death. Down and down and down... into the dark where he’d met Razor Rex.

        “I... I asked for...” Oop clenched his fists. “A world... without loss.”

        “AND IS THIS NOT WHAT I HAVE BLESSED YOU WITH?!”

        Razor Rex drifted towards him, floating down off of her throne.

        “THOSE THAT DIE CAN LIVE AGAIN,” she cried, “AS FUNNY SKELETONS AND ZOMBIES. THOSE THAT LIVE CAN CHOOSE TO NEVER DIE, THANKS TO MY HISTORIC ALLIANCE WITH THAT GUY DAVE AND HIS VAMPIRES.” She put her waxy black hand on Oop’s shoulder. “I MADE FRIENDS WITH A WITCH, TOO. YOU DIDN’T ASK FOR THAT BUT IT’S A LITTLE ADDED BONUS.”

        Razor Rex swept her scythe towards the stage, where Davy’s karaoke set was ending. The shadows past the curtain seemed to dance.

        “AND TONIGHT... TONIGHT WE’LL SHAPE THE TOWN ITSELF INTO A FORM THAT MAKES THOSE BLESSINGS EVERLASTING!” Razor Rex led Coach Oop in a dizzying salsa dance, dipping him low after just a few swift steps. “AND YET! AND YET! SISTER CAT TELLS ME THAT YOUR FAITH WAVERS.” She swept Oop back up to his feet and into a The Godfather Part II-style embrace, smooching his jowls with her cold bone snout. “YOU BROKE MY HEART, BROTHER APE! YOU BROKE YOUR MASK! YOU BROKE YOUR END OF OUR DARK BARGAIN!! IS UNDYING LOYALTY TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR IN EXCHANGE FOR AN UNDYING WORLD? IS DOUBT TO BE MY EFFORT’S SOLE REWARD??”

        “N-no!” Oop stuttered, feeling nauseous, his pulse pounding in his head. “No, of c-course not—”

        “OKAY AWESOME,” Razor Rex said. “THAT MUST BE MY REAL REWARD, THEN, RIGHT?”

        She’d swirled Oop to a sudden stop just inches from the trophy—Crush’s trophy. A bead of cold sweat trickled down Oop’s head. Razor Rex’s voices crawled around him from both sides, low and chilling, like pale graveyard mist.

        “...PROVE YOURSELF. PRESENT IT TO ME.”