Thanks for waiting! Max you're so magnetic. Over on Paranatural's Patreon, I posted some design work for Chapter 9 and some recent elaborate freelance art for $5+ patrons, if you're interested in hopping aboard to see something like that! You can also support Paranatural on Ko-fi! Thank you for reading, making fanwork, and sharing your enjoyment of Paranatural with me, it always brightens my day!

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[Transcript]

        Max thought better of retreating moments later and barged his way back inside the t-shirt rack.

        “You know what, YOU can explain. What are you doing here, man?!” Max hissed in a whisper.

        Johnny’s gaze swiveled back in his classmate’s direction. In the half-second of privacy he’d had since he was first discovered, Johnny had gone right back to his breakfast.

        “You could ask YOU the same thing,” Johnny mused with a mouthful of chocolate.

        “What am I doing here?!” snarled Max. “What am I doing here?!”

        “Yeah, like that.”

        “I live here, Johnny!”

        “Oh, for real? Hey, that’s pretty smart. Great minds think alike.” Johnny licked his fingers clean, efficiently slurping five digits at once. “There’s all sorts of free shirts and snacks you can steal here.”

        “I live upstairs! This is my dad’s store! He needs to—give me that. He needs to SELL this stuff to put food on the table, Johnny, and that’s hard enough without—”

        “Why doesn’t he just eat the food that he sells?” Johnny wiped his hands dry on his pants as he stood up.

        “...That’s a good question, Max,” Isaac reluctantly admitted in a whisper, leaning in like a monarch’s vizier.

        “See? Your butler gets it. What’s good, Legs?” Johnny grinned and punched Isaac in the shoulder, the classic bully greeting.

        “What?” Isaac squinted. “Don’t call me Legs, I won’t answer to Legs. I did but I won’t if you do it again.”

        “Pfft. I mean, you GOT ’EM, don’tcha? Y’know what they say. If the shoe fits?” Johnny muscled his way between the other two boys like a sticky human bumper car. “Then you PROBABLY HAVE LEGS.” He put his hands on his hips, content, for a time, to rest upon the laurels of this insightful conclusion. Then the single gear in his head began to whirr, and Johnny’s speech continued: “And your legs, they’re normal? You got NORMAL LEGS?”

        “I... I think so? Thought so?” Isaac tugged at the hem of his shorts.

        “SEE THAT’S FUNNY. ’Cause I coulda SWORN that I saw you do somethin’ SHOCKING with ’em just the other day.” Johnny spun on Max, suddenly no less accusatory and conspiratorial than Stephen insisting that every plateau was a tree felled by alien lumberjacks. “Isn’t that RIGHT, MAX?” He jabbed his thumb on the side of his skull. “My mind’s a bit CLOUDY. SPARK my memory for me, it’s nothin’ but STATIC up here!”

        “Oh, but I’d just hate to overcharge you, Johnny,” Max said, glancing at the free snack samples he’d enjoyed. “We’re all just glad the first zap gave you unlife to begin with. You don’t have to win a brain award. Just groan and stomp around until Herr Frankenstein can suture you a bride.”

        “...I know you know that I know what I’m talkin’ about,” Johnny grunted in defiance.

        “I’m sure you do,” Max sighed. “Is there anything else you know that I should know about?”

        “Uh, I know where you live,” Johnny offered, shrugging towards the Corner Shore’s top floor.

        “...That’s true, Max!” whispered Isaac, doing his vizier lean once again. “He knows because you told him!”

        “Thank you, Isaac.”

        “I also know that your little secretary here shoots LIGHTNING from his feet, and my WHOLE CREW knows that it was one of YOUR CREW we saw floatin’ through the air—”

        Isaac’s eyes went wide. He looked at Max in a panic.

        “Johnny hit his head and had a lovely dream about us,” Max explained, feigning unimpressed impatience.

        Floating through the air? What was Johnny on about THIS time? It wouldn’t have been wise to try and probe him for the answer. Now that Johnny had caught the scent of the Activity Club’s secret and was doggedly plodding his way towards the truth like a bloodhound, Max was not about to toss him any more red meat. Even if he had indulged him sparingly (perhaps with a nice, juicy cut of red herring) it wouldn’t have stayed a rare treat for long: for some inexplicable reason, Johnny was giving off heat like a grill on full blast. Standing beside him in the cramped Corner Shore aisle was like being in a sauna.

        “...Dude, why are you so hot?” Max griped at Johnny, taking note of it at last.

        The bully blinked.

        “............Bro?”

        Kting! The ringing that Johnny had been hearing in his ears all morning struck a high note as a second gear was added to his brain.

        “You’re like burning up!” Max said. “I swear, if you scarfed enough sugar to set off some kind of freak biochemical reaction—”

        “Huh? Oh, uh. Yeah. Chemistry.”

        Isaac’s eyes played a full round of Pong between the two of them.

        “...He’s probably SICK. With an AWFUL DISEASE.” Now the vizier in his voice was insidious, a Wormtongue with notes of a jealous Jafar.

        “Uh.” Johnny scratched the back of his neck. He was pretty warm... but wasn’t it just hot out? It was always hot in Bayview.

        Deep in the dark of his heart, looking up from his work and out through Johnny’s eyes, the blacksmith spirit, Forge, took in the blurry world beyond his host.