Had to go Super Saiyan on this one for the visual gags. Thanks for reading! Please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi, which lets this be my job. I could really use the help! Thank you!

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[Transcript]

        Back in the dark caves below the Biddle School, an unseen battle raged inside the Student Council’s cage.

        THWACK!! Isabel’s heels dug a groove in the gravel of the Detention Fortress floor. A heavy paw had crashed against her shield and sent her sliding backwards through the prison yard. Red spectral energy sublimated in her wake, ripped to wisps by the claws of the powerful Sphinx of Lies.

        “Like, NO moonwalking!” Pompom commanded through her megaphone, eliciting an “OOF!” from Isabel: a snare of pure Rules power had halted her momentum with sudden whiplash force.

        “I would’ve thought you Student Council types LOVED blindly backsliding to retrograde positions!” is what Max would have shouted up at Pompom, but he was sent careening by the sphinx before he could.

        “Ohmygosh, like, STOP slidingontheground you funnylittlebaseballboy?? This base belongs to us and you’re, like, neversafe and nevergettingout?” Pompom tossed her hair, not realizing that she’d asserted Max was trapped in an eternal baseball limbo, a Zeno’s paradox between home plate and safety on first base.

        Miraculously, though, Max had already reached the bench—specifically the bench where a musclebound student had been benching weights that weighed as much as he did. His bouncing body struck the bodybuilding bully, shunting him off of the bench as Max slid smoothly into place beneath the barbell. Onlookers gasped. This constituted a provocative challenge in the subtle etiquette of the Detention Fortress; the bully he’d expelled had earned exclusive rights to use the weightlifting equipment by proving that he was the strongest student in his corner of the prison yard, a system doomed to reinforce the status quo.

        “HEY! Whaddaya think you’re doin’, punk?!” the displaced bully barked, rising in a dusty fury from the ground.

        “I’M NOT SCARED OF YOU!! I DON’T NEED HELP!!” Max screamed in a panic. He was fortunate enough to not be crushed beneath the barbell hanging over him, because he was being crushed beneath a hungry lion that was holding it instead.

        “C’mon, bro! I only want one BITE!” the Sphinx of Lies snarled, and his grin snapped shut an inch from Max’s face. 

        Max screeched as the spirit’s mighty poltergeist muscles lifted the barbell between them like a feather as he desperately clung to it for protection, forgetting that the sphinx could just as easily phase through it.

        “Oh my god,” onlookers gasped. Max had benched three-digit weights with just one arm.

        The Sphinx of Lies tore the barbell from his grip and cast it aside with a heavy crash.

        “Oh my GOD,” cheered Max’s newest bully fans.

        “Like, stopthrowing that WEIGHTAROUND!” Pompom commanded, and a dozen bully despots realized that they had been desperately asserting what their success had already proven, and took a moment to appreciate the little things in life.

        “HE’S your opponent!” Isabel shouted at the Sphinx of Lies, failing to pull aggro back from Max. She launched a barrage of pot shot spec-shots at both sphinxes as she rushed to rescue Max from his assailant, but her bullets bounced off the Sphinx of Lies, and the cackling Sphinx of Rules simply ducked behind the rampart of the watchtower. The bullies who witnessed this mistakenly assumed that Isabel was Max’s hype man, and was declaring war on his behalf—a war on them, if they opposed him... but then a battle with the Student Council, they deduced in dumbstruck awe, following Isabel’s finger from her leader to his foe.

        “So, like, don’tyoudare point finger guns at me?” Pompom uttered in a tone that straddled question and command. “That’s violentimagery and, like, a WAY illegalweapon that you socan’thaveinhere butIstillcan?”

        “Not even the right to bare arms...” Juvie sighed, rolling up a stick of bubblegum like a cigarette. “Well... these arms o’ mine ain’t been bare in a long time,” she said, and Juvie wistfully stared at the stickers on her bicep like they were a lattice of old scars and timeworn tattoos. “Guess when your hands ain’t clean... the guilt keeps risin’ til you’re shoulderin’ the burden that you used to keep at arm’s length. Makes you think...”

        “It doesn’t, but I respect a leader who can confidently state something untrue,” Lisa replied. “It’s a quality of all the best criminal masterminds.” She smiled at Juvie. “You are so wise and deserving of your throne that I don’t want.”

        “Max!” Isaac cried, but as he dashed to help him, another shout from Pompom stopped him near-dead in his tracks.

        “No RUNNING!” the Black Saints’ Number Eight decreed, and Max’s imminent rescue was delayed a few more seconds: Isabel and Isaac immediately slowed to a leisurely pace, which looked awesome and dramatic as they surged with rage and swirling spectral energy, but did little to assuage their clubmate’s terror. 

        A writhing Max, meanwhile, was foolishly trying to use anti-shark techniques against the unrelated beast that had him pinned, but couldn’t pierce the lion’s cool sunglasses with his fingers. The crowd around him misinterpreted his flailing as a fist-pumping peace sign, and so assumed he was declaring peace and victory in one efficient gesture. A dozen bullies kneeled and swore new oaths of bully fealty, taken by a leader who was gracious to the kingpin he’d dethroned.

        “She can’t tell me to stop what she can’t see!” Isaac growled beneath his breath, which was swelling in his lungs as air began to whirl around him. He glowered at the sphinx as he marched closer. “A runt like you’s got nothing on the king of beasts I’VE tamed! Instead of Max, eat THIS! King Catnine’s roaring WIND!!”

        A sudden gust sent an extremely conspicuous wave of Detention Fortress dust swirling from Isaac’s extended hand, a blast (nerfed by a proudly untamed King Catnine) that only ruffled his bloodthirsty target’s mane. Isaac blinked in embarrassed shock as Pompom’s spotlight fell upon him in an instant, though her confusion about the nature of his crime delayed his sentencing. 

P: ...
I: ...

P: “No farting!”
I: “I DIDN’T!”

        ...is what Isaac would have said, were he allowed to speak his truth. Instead, he shouted “I DID! I DID IT! THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DID!” and lost about as much street cred as Max had gained by accident.

        Though Isaac’s wind blast had delayed the sphinx’s feast, it was neither he nor Isabel who reached Max first to save him. A fist flung out at something shifting, purple, and intangible, but struck a target no less real than solid flesh.

        “DOOF!” the Sphinx of Lies yelped, toppled off Max by the blindsiding sucker punch.

        Johnny’s shadow filled the void where it had been. He stared down at his still-balled fist in silence, startled by the substance he’d just struck in empty air. No... not empty. He tracked the purple blob to where it shifted on the ground. He watched it fading in and out, a glowing pulse beneath the mundane light his eyes were meant to gather.

        “...HUH?!” squeaked Max, gawking at his unexpected savior. “WHAT?? HOW??”

        Johnny let his fist relax, and silently held the hand of a soon-to-be spectral out to Max to help him stand up from the bench.

        “The Dragon of Detention wants to shake his hand!” gasped Max’s growing entourage. “He’s acknowledging his strength!”

        Isaac had made similar excuses for the anime boys who held hands in his favorite shows, but this time couldn’t help but see the subtext. His soundless gasp of jealousy left Isaac looking like a baby bird whose worms were late and undercooked when brought out by the waiter.

        The Sphinx of Lies shook his head and pushed his glasses back in place, growling and baring his fangs to scare those pesky cartoon birds and circling stars out of their orbit. His vision refocused on Isabel looming above him. Two of her arms were folded calmly at her chest, while the six she’d made with unseen spectral energy unfurled to pummel him while he was on the ground.

        “You beat me, bro. I give up,” the Sphinx of Lies said, and he grinned a vicious grin.

        “I forgive you,” Isabel kindly reassured him. Her fists blurred to a rain of red as they raced each other to deliver the first blow in her combo.