The secret fifth Johnny gang member who was definitely there the whole time. Thanks for reading, everybody! Please support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! If you already do, THANK YOU SO MUCH!

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[Transcript]

        As the Student Council fell back to their guard posts and patrol routes, the next tier of predators in the Detention Fortress food chain began to slowly flex the claws that they’d kept sheathed. Bullies long forgotten by the school above circled the newest arrivals, assessing who was prey and who was worthy of recruitment to the pack. 

        “...Why’s everybody looking at us like we’re fresh meat?” a worried Isaac whispered. 

        One bully had begun to lovingly craft a single perfect spitball with a concerningly involuntary stream of famished drool. Another was crafting a custom-sized locker like an undertaker carving a coffin when a drifter first rode into town in a cowboy movie.

        “They take the wounded and the elderly first,” Max muttered back. “That’s me and you, Isaac.”

        “...I’m thirteen, Max.”

        “Hoisting death flags like a pirate. You are begging for the ice floe, buddy.”

        “It’s an inauspicious number, to be certain,” Lisa agreed, giving Isaac a look of you’re-definitely-doomed pity.

        No one had attracted more attention than Johnny, however. All around the prison yard, eyes were widening and narrowing and sparkling with tears; Johnny’s presence had sent the whole flock of jailbirds soaring across the full spectrum of human emotion. Some closed their fists and shook with rage. Some cowered and whispered his name in hushed tones. Others touched old scars, or broken hearts, or blushed as they recalled long-dormant crushes. Johnny had a history here—a tale that was written more plainly on the faces of the inmates than it could have been spelled out in chalk upon the walls of the Detention Fortress.

        “Hey. Listen up, geek squad.” Johnny cast a grave glance back at Isaac and the others. “You wanna make it through the day down here? Then shut up, stick with me, and do exactly what I say.” He crossed his arms. “First thing you gotta do in detention is prove that you’re no PUSHOVER. That means you gotta stomp right up to the strongest kid in the yard and PUNCH ’EM IN THE FACE as HARD AS YOU CAN!” 

        Johnny punched himself in the face as hard as he could.

        “All right, now you guys do it,” Johnny grumbled in a daze, successfully deescalating before he could fly into a vengeful rage and start a lengthy fistfight with himself.

        “You would be so famous if they made zoos for humans,” Max said.

        “They do, Max. Look around you,” Isabel sighed. She had already punched Johnny twice, which was barely the start of her broken boss character combo.

        Johnny was spared from the rest of the flurry by a new arrival’s scoff.

        “If you’re lookin’ to slug the top dog in the yard, hoss... you’re beatin’ up the wrong tree.” A girl with a gravely voice, stickers and temporary tattoos on every inch of her freckled skin, and curly hair as bright orange as her jumpsuit stood at the fore of a legion of bullies. “That one’s been all bark since his old tricks were still a treat this whole pound begged for.”

        Everybody turned to face the swaggering delinquent who’d addressed them (except for an unimpressed Max, who looked up to the ceiling like a turkey in the rain). One of the girl’s minions knelt to offer her a stick of gum, which she took after spitting the last lifeless piece on the floor. Johnny swatted the same offer away. He had no interest in the Fortress’s formalities—the veneer of crude decorum that disguised this place’s might-makes-right reality.

        “...Juvie,” Johnny snarled. He met the girl’s familiar eyes with complicated anger.

        “The Dragon of Detention,” Juvie sneered back, addressing Johnny by a long-discarded title. Its echo rippled through the crowd behind her in a wave of awestruck whispers. “Fittin’ alias for a myth whose might is make-believe.”

        “...I never asked for that frickin’ nickname,” Johnny grumbled.

        “You never earned it neither.” Juvie took two heavy steps to stare down Johnny from within his spiky shadow. “What kind of dragon leaves its horde behind? Flies the coop it conquered with its tail between its legs?”

        “Possibly a wyvern,” Isaac helpfully suggested. “To facilitate attacks made with its stinger.”

        Isabel nobly slid between Isaac and the bullies as if he’d started reciting the periodic table of elements while juggling his lunch money.

        “I busted outta detention to set my friends free,” Johnny said. “That used to mean you, too, Juvie.”

        “Not anymore, Johnny Jabroni,” Juvie hissed back, slithering still deeper into his personal space. “I don’t want your friendship. I don’t want the so-called freedom that you DITCHED me for.” She scoffed and tapped her forehead. “Freedom to what, huh? Freedom to flunk and get lectured by teachers! A rat race to college and thousands in debt! Security cameras, endless homework, and one square meal a day you gotta pay for. Think about it, Johnny. Where exactly is the REAL prison?!”

        “Down here,” said Lisa.

        “Also down here,” agreed Isabel.

        “No, Plato’s caveman is right,” Max tonelessly chimed in. “Think of all the shadows we could puppet if we simply faced the wall and wore our dunce caps like a crown. We’d live like kings down here: locked in a dungeon at age twelve by a power-hungry widow who was born in the year 1300.”

        “...Sounds like the Dragon brought the rest of the Ren Faire with him,” Juvie scoffed, looking Max up and down with disdain. Her minions laughed on cue behind her. “Hey, Sir Pantsed-a-lot. Put your visor down before you get tilted off your high horse, you geek LARP ballboy dink.” Juvie raised a hand to slap the brim of Max’s baseball hat down over his eyes, but Johnny knocked her arm away: a perfect parry.

        “I’m the one who’s gonna get medieval if you start pickin’ on my boys, Juvie,” Johnny snarled, and the fire of his previous Detention Fortress persona flickered briefly in his eyes. “Back off.”

        “Wait I kinda think she’s cool now actually,” Max said, earning a huffy glance from Isaac for uncritically accepting that he was one of Johnny’s “boys.”

        “I don’t follow your orders anymore, Johnny. I rule the underworld now,” Juvie sneered in a sinister hiss, ignoring the irrelevant chatter from Johnny’s party members. “You’re lookin’ at the undisputed queen of the Detention Fortress, hoss.”

        “Nice of you to keep my crown warm,” Johnny said, cracking his neck, “but it’s time to take it off. I don’t want it gettin’ dented on the floor when you bow down.”

        “How like a dragon,” Juvie chuckled. “Breathin’ nothin’ but hot air.”

        Both delinquents lunged at each other simultaneously, throwing the first blows in an all-out battle for ultimate bully supremacy.