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[Transcript]

        Isabel marched up the winding stairs to Devilora’s lair in silence, escorted by a Student Council marksman in a white mask and a monochrome beret.

        One moment, Barrister had been accusing Isabel of masterminding illegal anti-Student-Council war games, having led her Shockodile child soldiers in a retroactively unlawful hitball skirmish against a team that included Serge and his troops. The next moment, a loudspeaker had crackled to life in the courtroom, and the creaking voice of Vice Principal DuNacht had summoned Isabel upstairs before the Black Saint could convict her.

        Isabel had skipped past the dungeon’s minions, monsters, hazards, and locked doors for a trip straight to the final boss room. She’d make sure it was DuNacht’s mistake to let her get this close without a fight (besides a brutal battle with a hungry lion spirit or whatever, which was nothing next to dueling two immortal dogs the other day).

        “Miss Isabel... Guerra. It WAS too dark in here; I’m glad fate brought such a BRIGHT little girl to glare so incandescently within my looming shadow.”

        The Fear Witch grinned as a grumpy Isabel was prodded to her seat.

        “...Fate brought me here, huh?” Isabel grumbled, glancing at the Student Council soldier who’d had a bow drawn at her back as she departed for the ramparts with an unpracticed salute.

        “Yes, fate! An instrument that anyone can play... if they know how to pull the strings,” cackled DuNacht. “This destined meeting was delayed, and now allowed, by my design. Please, have some SWEETS.” She gestured to a tray of sallow tea cakes topped with unsteeped leaves. A tea bag’s tail protruded from each pastry. “Are you quite comfortable, Miss Guerra?”

        Isabel looked from her lumpy armchair to the Vice Principal, then up to Principal Pleezdoo, who nervously waved from her pillar, and then back to the Sphinx of Truth, whose smile hardly hid the spirit’s fulminating malice.

        “No,” Isabel said flatly.

        “Why NOT?” frowned Devilora. “It’s just us LADIES here! Isn’t it ALWAYS dark enough for GIRLS’ NIGHT underground? Is it because I SKIMPED and didn’t get the squad FONDUE?!” The Vice Principal slammed a withered hand down on a big red button at her side, and, somewhere in the school, a Student Council caterer exploded.

        “...Three is a crowd,” Isabel said, narrowing her eyes at Devilora as her headcount came up short.

        “Never for a coven, sweetie.” The Vice Principal’s grin returned with still more wicked glee to widen it. “And if FOUR is your limit, well... the black cat on my broomstick doesn’t count as my plus one.” She pet the tiny sphinx upon her desk. “We worked hard many years ago to guarantee THIS pretty kitty’s only worth about one sixth! Nyeh-heh heh HEH!”

        “I’d wather wound down to zewo than one hundwed, you decwepit disenchantwess,” the Sphinx of Truth scoffed, though she leaned into the Vice Principal’s knife-sharp nails without a hint of hesitation.

        Isabel blinked at Devilora in disdainful disbelief.

        “You really ARE—”

        “Like you, my girl? Oh, yes,” sneered Devilora. “We share a sense for the world unseen... and the STRENGTH it takes to strike FEAR in its empty phantom threats.”

        Isabel’s eyes widened as black spectral energy streamed in a powerful surge from DuNacht’s stooping shoulders.

        “...Don’t you think you ought to be a little less carefree about flaunting... what we have in common?” Isabel shot back in a whisper. She cast a concerned glance up at the less-than-blissfully ignorant Principal Pleezdoo, who was blinking down at them in curious confusion from her perch.

        “A fly on the wall is a much different thing than a fly in my web,” laughed Devilora. “Posy is my precious playmate, and you may take my word, thanks to our other guest, that she is an innocent, perpetually bewildered little bystander. She takes the inexplicable in tiny, tiptoed stride, so speak as you would if it were JUST US.”

        “In Latin with a cross raised?” Principal Pleezdoo joked with a fluttering and largely cheerless chuckle.

        “With my fists to do the talking?” Isabel said, surging with red energy to match her spectral captor’s.

        “Okay, well, let’s not threaten any faculty, dear,” came the Principal’s nervous retreat from her previous tone. “We simply allude to their wrongdoing and malignant inner darkness, hm? One must be the bigger person by becoming very small, polite, and placidly accepting of discomfort.”

        “She locked me and my friends up in an evil underground castle,” Isabel seethed. “I’d press the issue and more charges if I didn’t think that you’d play devil’s advocate, Principal Pleezdoo.”

        “Well, I think you’re a little angel, Miss Guera,” Principal Pleezdoo democratically replied, “and therefore, hopefully, do not, er, need me to stand up for you, in this specific hopeless case.”

        “You see?” laughed Devilora. “What’s the harm in talking shop with such an amicable audience? Besides, secrecy is a Consortium obsession, Miss Guerra, and I haven’t played by their rules in a very, VERY long time. Not since my last lengthy absence... which swiftly dovetailed with some unforeseen maternity leave.” She winked at Isabel, or had some sort of eerie facial spasm. “Oh, it is a tricky balance for a working woman, isn’t it, Miss Guerra? I didn’t FEEL like returning to that sort of thankless employment once I had an EMPTY NEST bereft of SPAWN... not even after GOING BACK TO SCHOOL. There’s only so many decades of fun to be had, I suppose, in serving as the PUPPET of a BUG. Nyeh-heh heh HYECCHK!”

        Isabel flinched at DuNacht’s wretching lurch of a laugh. She didn’t know what the Vice Principal was rambling about, but it sounded like—was she some sort of rogue Consortium agent? If she was, she must have flown under Mr. Spender’s radar this whole time, and the Activity Club’s too, suppressing her spectral energy when they passed in the hallway or exchanged unpleasantries in the teacher’s lounge. Spender couldn’t have known that DuNacht had once worked with Boss Leader... and the Vice Principal certainly LOOKED like an agent whose heyday might have been before his time.

        “...Quitting doesn’t mean they’ll let you get away with this,” Isabel said. Whatever THIS is, she appended in her mind.

        “Oh, the jig WILL be up soon, I’m well aware,” grinned Devilora. “What killer isn’t keen to let the mask slip once their masterstroke has struck? Until then, though, I mean to lurk and lie and get away with murder UNOBSTRUCTED! Nyeh-HECK heh heh! Know this! Your teacher will not free you from my Fortress... nor will he, nor YOU and your friends, thwart my ambitious machinations!”

        Isabel’s stomach turned and tightened in a knot.

        “Oh, um, well, let’s not murder anybody, maybe? Let’s not get away with murder?” Principal Pleezdoo interjected. “Let’s, er, let’s compromise and maybe get convicted for the murder?”

        “...No more pwophecies, you weckwess, bwainwess cwone,” the Sphinx of Truth hissed at Devilora, “or the next twuth set in stone will be the date carved on your gwave.”

        Isabel looked to the spirit, thinking of how she, too, could put its strange power to use. She thought to shout out that her friends would all break free, that Max would be fine facing the Sphinx of Lies without her help, to brag that she’d be tough enough to take on some old Consortium dropout without Flipflop or Eightfold or anybody here to fight beside her. Fear of what she’d find she couldn’t say, though, kept her prophecies unspoken.

        With Isabel’s eyes averted towards the floor, Fauxbia licked her lips and gazed at her with hungry greed. The click of DuNacht’s bones as she climbed over her own desk snapped Isabel back to vigilant attention.

        “What a BRAVE and TALENTED young lady you’ve become against all odds, my dear Miss Guerra,” she grinned, flashing her sharpened teeth. “Nothing like the FEARFUL, TROUBLED children that I normally SNAP UP! Yes, you’re not the type in the slightest, burning BRIGHT RED with WILLFUL DEFIANCE... and yet—”

        Isabel’s spectral energy sharpened into porcupine-quill spikes as Devilora creaked a shade too close for comfort.

        “—wouldn’t that make YOU, my dear, the most INSIDIOUS and WICKED WITCH OF ALL??” The Vice Principal’s head tilted sideways with all the ease and squeaking output of a rusty, leaking spigot, and she stroked her now off-kilter chin in thought. “Yes. Yesss. Right under my nose, all along... the IDEAL CANDIDATE—”

        “I’m not gonna run for Student Council,” Isabel interrupted, eager to be anywhere but right under the Vice Principal’s nose, “and I’m not going to be a witch—whatever THAT means, you old freak. If you want to flip somebody to the dark side, try a student who has less fun beating up bad guys like you.”

        “Ooh hoo-hoo hoo!” cackled Devilora Demonelle DuNacht, kicking tea cakes aside and earning a hiss from the sphinx as she scuttled back over her desk to her seat. “I like your PLUCK, my dear, I do! Would that I had REACHED OUT sooner for a sample of your SPINE!”

        Isabel stood up from her chair. Red spectral energy flared from her fists, and she stared hateful daggers at DuNacht.

        “Will that be all, Vice Principal DuNacht? If we’re not fighting, there’s another battle I’d like to get back to... but I’d bet that you already knew that.” Isabel’s eyes narrowed. “You only brought me here to separate me from my friends, so your minions could convince themselves they stood a chance of beating them without me.”

        These were words that Isabel could have said in true blue... if they had, in fact, been true. They were NOT true, however, and so the sentence that she actually spoke aloud was very different from the taunt she had intended. Isabel’s eyes snapped into gobsmacked saucers as the Vice Principal’s TRUE motivation for summoning her escaped her lips unbidden.

        “Ah. Hm. Yes. Well. I was hoping for a bit more dramatic preamble before that reveal,” sighed DuNacht, “but the SHOW MUST GO ON, I suppose...” An eerie, nigh-inhuman grin unfurled across her face.

        Isabel’s scream echoed out into the cavernous oblivion surrounding the Detention Fortress.