The MAX PLUSH is available RIGHT HERE!! Thank you everyone who's supported the campaign and helped to spread the word, I really appreciate it! Getting to 400 would be a huge help, so if you're on the fence about getting one, please do consider it!

You can also support Paranatural on Patreon, where I've been posting a bunch of character designs lately, or on Ko-fi! Thank you!

Readers have tipped me off that the RSS feed is currently not working properly. I'm very sorry about the interruption! I'm exploring ways to fix it, but the site is a little under the weather right now with a lot of Hiveworks services winding down. I am doing my best to construct a parachute when I'm able, but time is tight for me right now... another reason to support projects like the plush, which are keeping a roof above my head right now, and make it easier to focus on my main work! I'll keep posting updates on RSS etc. down here, so keep an eye out! Thank you and sorry again!

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[Transcript]

        “ILLEGAL WEINER DETECTED!” cried a Student Council henchman, pointing like a total dweeboid snitch at Cash Reward. Stephen’s long dog had dangled down from RJ’s shirt to lick Coach Oop’s knee for some reason, a supremely ill-timed act of dachshund whimsy. “LOCK ’EM UP, BOYS! We’re about to hit the WEIRD quotas!”

        “I’m ABOUT TO HIT some weird YOU LOSERS!” Stephen screeched back, leaping into battle like a monkey raised by wolves.
        
        He kicked his shoe off to propel it like a missile at the first Student Council goon to lunge for RJ, then sunk a punch straight into the empty sneaker right after it struck its target’s face.

        “KICKBOXING BASH!” Stephen exclaimed, having donned his own shoe like a gauntlet. The dork he’d decked and/or stomped went sailing back into his fellow Student Councilors, and they all collapsed like bowling pins; they made the noise and everything. Unfortunately, also like bowling pins, the Student Council goons soon rose back into ordered rows with synchronized, mechanical efficiency.

        “Nice,” said Coach Oop, appraising Stephen’s form. “I mean be nice. I mean don’t fight. Er, break it up—”

        “TRIPLE KICK!” shouted Stephen. His third kick was, confusingly, debatably a punch; this kept his targets on the backfoot while his forearm three-legged-raced straight towards their faces (neck and neck with his two feet), where the fist-first flurry found its forceful footing—a handy feat of underhanded footwork.

        RJ silently screamed the name of their cool special attack, too, as they leapt into the fray to help their friend resist arrest.

        “he’s like tarzan,” Alex noted, watching Stephen mow through minions like a Musou game. “i could teach him english. in exchange, for primal romance.”

        “HEY! CUT IT OUT, YOU LITTLE BRATS! RRRGH, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS SCHOOL?!” shrieked Miss Baxter, who’d been buffeted to and fro by a second and third wave of Student Councilors. As an expert compartmentalizer, it was easy for her to ignore that she was definitely part of the problem when it came to Bayview Biddle School’s lack of normalcy.

        “Oh,” said Ed. Having gathered a brainful of data from the chaos that surrounded them, they boldly advanced their initial hypothesis: “This seems bad?” Further analysis was needed before they could leap to a conclusion or the rescue—the scientific method had a bunch of tricky steps! It was Ed’s duty to adhere to its mysterious dogma nonetheless, though, as a big eureka genius. Perhaps they’d find the truth of who was right and who was wrong here, in this brawl, once everybody died and had their remains preserved via rapid burial in riverbed silt.

        Inaction was no shield against encroaching authoritarianism, however. As Ed stood idle on the sidelines, a stalker watched the watcher through a swatch of swampy colors. Matte, Art Club aficionado and Number Twelve of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals, had been assigned to bring Ed in for their various Frankensteinian crimes against nature, such as the time they’d brought a frog back from the dead in science class with a potato, several wires, and a dream.

        “It’s no good........ I’ll never capture them.......” lamented Matte. “Just like I’ll never capture anything of value in my ART........”

        The tension of the hunt had left Matte soaked in nervous sweat; as it ran down his paint-palette mask, its running colors had made him look just like an athlete in a Gatorade commercial. Maybe one of THOSE guys—someone BIG and STRONG like Blitz—could have overpowered Ed... but Matte was both outmuscled and outsmarted by his prey, the most dangerous gamer. Eddy was a PRODIGY, an insurmountable SAVANT. As Matte followed his quarry from behind, Ed was always several steps ahead of him—at LEAST fifteen feet further down the hallway! Who, then, was the HUNTER? Who, then, was the HUNTED?!

        “Don’t fret, Matt!!” chirped Scout, the cheerful Number Eleven of the Twelve Black Saint Councilor-Generals. She was among the few students who remembered that Matte’s name was actually “Matt E.”, and that he’d likely only gone along with its accidental-but-thematically-appropriate compression due to his many woes and melancholies. “I’ve stalked all sorts of woodland creatures at Camp Seaside so that I could earn my Tracking Badge and Sneaking Badge and squirrel away enough squirrel meat to shiver through the winter ha ha, though I starved and struggled. It’s not so big a leap to hunt a human ha ha wouldn’t you agree?? Logistically or maybe even ethically!!”

        “FRIENDSHIP FUSION!” Stephen shouted, interlocking with RJ and Cash Reward.

        “Who are we to say what’s human........” Matte despaired, observing the resulting bully chimera, “when we foolishly rebuild Babel in flesh........? With beast above man in this new forbidden tower, is GOD to be tread underfoot.......? Or do we stand on naught but air, cartoon coyotes well beyond the cliffside? Waiting for the fall to loose the meaning from our tongues, however fractured, once the gravity of knowledge brings us hurtling back to earth........?”

        “I ate a coyote once ha ha,” said Scout. “Okay I’m going to ambush Ed Burger now!!”

        No sooner had she stepped out from hiding, however, than her hiking boot tiptoed upon an ill-placed indoor twig. SNAP! Ed’s gaze slowly snapped, too, to the source of the sound, and both Black Saint Councilor-Generals dove for cover in a panic. 

        “R-RETREAT FOR NOW HA HA!!”

        They’d been outsmarted once again. It was like Ed could ANTICIPATE their EVERY MOVE several moments after they’d made them!

        “I said KNOCK IT OFF!” barked Coach Oop, struggling to suppress his spectral energy as he waded into the sea of brawling students.

        Stephen and the gang complied at once, knocking Coach Oop’s hat off of his head with the tail end of a Friendship Fusion tilt-a-whirling kick technique. The impact shattered their bully bond, sending them all sailing off in different directions. RJ struck the ceiling and then flapjacked on the ground; Cash Reward was sent somersaulting down the hall, tangled up in Stephen’s sweatshirt; and Stephen himself collided with Alex, careened through the crowd as human tumbleweed, then slid to a stop on the floor in Baxter’s classroom.

        “Oh, shoot! Alex! Are you okay?!” Stephen asked, still seeing double from the impact.

        “worrying about me...” whispered Alex in a dreamy daze, “when you’re the one who’s wounded...”

        Before Stephen could inform her that he’d always had the scar that she was tracing with her finger, Alex accidentally jabbed him squarely in the eye.

        “OW! Well I’m wounded now!” 

        “SUSPECT IS ATTEMPTING TO FLEE!” a Student Council shout came echoing into the room. “STUDENT STEPHEN HENCHMAN: HALT!” The dizzy trooper, rising from the ground, pointed at a swiftly fleeing Cash Reward, who was wearing Stephen’s sweatshirt like a supervillain’s cowl. “IDENTIFYING CLOTHING! IDENTIFYING SCAR! SUSPECT IS CRAWLING ON ALL FOURS: CONSISTENT WITH BEHAVIORAL PROFILE. THAT’S OUR PERP! PURSUE! PURSUE!”

        Before Stephen could correct the record by calling for his dog and leaping back into the fight, a silhouette rose, undefeated, from the bodies on the floor. Through the settling dust of combat, RJ looked back at their scarred friend with a smile. 

        Leave Cash Reward to me, their silent smirk seemed to suggest. After all... I don’t lose money, bro: I save it.

        Stephen was rendered equally speechless by adoring awe for his friend. He realized the chance he’d just been given just in time to drag a limp Alex out of sight like a bag of raked leaves—Miss Baxter lurched into the doorframe, pushing free from a pile of students, and stooped to scan her classroom for intruders with a hiss. Stephen gulped from the shadows of his hiding place, then began to grin with devious bully glee. In the cartoon dust cloud of the scuffle’s grand finale, the Student Council and the teachers had lost track of him and Alex! He’d successfully sneaked into Miss Baxter’s classroom... where ALIENS had been ABDUCTING PEOPLE AFTER SCHOOL! 

        The door slammed shut. Outside, the sounds of warfare slowly faded. Stephen would have to trust that his friends and dog would hang in there without him... until he came to save them in a hijacked UFO.

        “Sorry, Lex...” sighed Stephen, brushing hair out of his eyes. “Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a bit...”

        They had squeezed into the shadowed nook beneath Miss Baxter’s desk—a small but reliable hiding place, if they could dodge their teacher’s legs for several hours.

        “um. i don’t mind... if you don’t mind,” mumbled Alex. Her diary wasn’t going to believe that any of this had actually happened... just like everybody else, before she had met Stephen.

        “Hey,” Stephen chuckled, “ASTRONAUTS had to be WAY more cramped for WAY longer to reach the fake moon where they filmed the fake moon landing! Am I right??”

        “no,” said Alex, smiling back at him with budding affection. 

        “Heck, forget meeting an ALIEN,” Stephen grinned (they likely would, since the government had laser guns that took away your memories). “I’m feelin’ plenty lucky that I got to meet you, Alex!”

        Alex swooned. Was it her imagination, or had Stephen just winked at her? He’d been winking almost non-stop since she’d poked him in the eye, in fact... was Stephen feeling all the same new feelings SHE was?? Only time would tell, and they had lots of time to kill; perhaps the threat of death would make time spill its secrets sooner. 

        Alex sighed and settled in beneath the desk, unaware that something nearby—something unseen, disembodied—had begun to gather fascinating data...