Apologies for the skipped update, I hurt my back last week and couldn't sit to work. All healed now though! Thanks for waiting! Hope you're all well. If you're enjoying the show, please consider supporting Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi! Thank you! :^) See you next time!

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[Transcript]

        “Like, ohmygodyouguys, STOP FIGHTING!”

        Pompom’s voice bounced off the walls of the Detention Fortress, amped up to deafening volume by the power of a megaphone. To everyone’s surprise (especially the archbullies her spotlight had illuminated), Johnny and Juvie froze at her command. Their fists hung in midair, unable to begin their fated showdown.

        “S-since when... did YOU take orders... from the ding-darn STUDENT COUNCIL, hoss?” a straining Juvie hissed with effort through a gritted, mirthless grin.

        Johnny, too, was fighting a current he couldn’t resist. A forcefield only he could feel was holding him back with more strength than even Ollie could muster (his usual failsafe for breaking up unbridled brawls).

        “I c-could... ask you... the SAME THING, Juvie... but I already know the ANSWER!”

        Anger flashed on Juvie’s face, and she strained harder against the force holding her back. She’d assumed that it was empathy, a burden she had overcome through strength of will before.

        “You don’t know lickety-SQUAT!” she spat. “YOU’RE the traitor here, Johnny, not me!”

        “...Something’s wrong,” Isabel whispered, watching the frozen bullies as their fight failed to continue.

        “I dunno,” Max muttered at her side. “Johnny’s been taking a lot of bold leaps forward lately in between his two steps back. We may be seeing inner conflict here,” he speculated sagely, “which is way less fun to watch than violent gladiator conflict, as proud as I am of his progress. Let’s hope Johnny takes those two steps back to bull rush his opponent.”

        “Okaysolike, TOTALLY LISTEN UP, you cutiebeauty bullybabies! EYES ON ME!” Pompom commanded, bracketing her words with wailing feedback from her megaphone.

        Everybody snapped to stare at Pompom in her tower, falling silent in an instant. Bullies who’d been scrawling out apologies in chalk upon the walls of the Detention Fortress suddenly spun to face her, and the resulting screech of nails, noses, and elbows on the sleek stone made a tonally discordant jumpscare shriek.

        “OKAY,” Max sputtered, winded by the spasm that had turned him towards the tower. “DEFINITELY NOT NORMAL.”

        “OW, MY NECK!” squeaked Isaac.

        Lisa wasn’t bothered by the whiplash, since she’d been born with a double-jointed neck that let her rival owls and dolls in eerie flexibility. Losing control, however, sent a bloom of sticky dread throughout her body, a rush of sparking nerves that made her blood feel like molasses. Lisa didn’t like being in this place, so far from her minions and secrets and resources. She needed to get a foothold here... and fast.

        “Like, ohmygoshyouguys you SEE? It’s not that hard to, like, just dowhatyou’retold?” Pompom’s bright blue eyes flashed with sinister underlighting as she loomed over the beacon she was manning like a turret. “Not that you, like, have, like, anyotherchoice...”

        The eighth Black Saint Councilor-General grinned, and the Activity Club bristled, sparking with bright spectral energy. Something supernatural was surely going on here...!

        “...Since I’m, like, SUCH a totalcutiepeep!” Pompom giggled, and the tension snapped like the rubber band her noodly limbs resembled. “Like, who could lookaway or, like, say NO to me teehee? I’m like Rapunzel in MichelFoucault’sPANOPTICON teehee!”

        “Shouldn’t you credit Bentham since we’re in a literal actual prison?” asked one erudite delinquent. “We’re not exactly in the realm of analytical abstraction.”

        “Yeah we’re in a big evil castle,” another overeducated middle schooler agreed. “And doesn’t it defeat the purpose of a panopticon if we can see you?”

        “Like, doesn’t it defeatthepurpose if you CAN’T?!” Pompom scoffed, spinning her searchlight in a pirouette. The tower briefly resembled a lighthouse filmed in timelapse as its beam whirled around and around the fortress walls.

        That vain and vexing cheerleader! thought Bea, fuming below (she was stationed in the yard of the Detention Fortress, where she was overseeing the reeducation of the willfully uneducated flunkies in her charge). Pompom was in EIGHTH PLACE on the Black Saints’ cutthroat scoreboard, and yet she acted so PRETTY and PERFECT, like she was ABOVE EVERYBODY! Okay so she literally was while on watchtower duty, and the lighting up there DID flatter her (like every other DRONE in her drooling swarm of admirers), but that didn’t make Pompom a PRINCESS! It didn’t make her RAPUNZEL! Bea’s imagination did, because Pompom had forced it to, and now she was imagining her in a lovely bright pink dress! If only Rapunzel WOULD let her hair down, because her pigtails were nice but lacked novelty’s thrill, and then Bea could ascend her golden tresses (which would be PAINFUL to her SCALP) and finally save Pompom from her way-too-high OPINION of herself! 

        “Okay so I know that it’s TOTALLYCONFUSING foryouguys since you’re, like, not as smartasme? But don’t worry: thanks to the powervestedinme by the latest Code of Conduct, there’s only onerulehere,” said Pompom, twirling her hair and also the rest of her body. She stepped up on the lens of the searchlight like a stage, and the beam rose to the ceiling, lighting Pompom ominously from below. “DO WHAT I SAY.” She smiled and posed like a pop star. “Okaaay? That means breakitup, youtwo,” she said, pointing at Johnny and Juvie. “No fighting on MY watch!”

        A sneering voice, unheard by Pompom and the other mundane students, stole the last word:

        “No fighting... and, therefore, no fighting back.”

        A sphinx stalked into view from its hidden perch at the top of Pompom’s tower. Red spectral energy streamed from its large, scarlet wings, a feathered tail flicked with malicious excitement, and the Sphinx of Rules grinned down at the Activity Club.

        “It’s called monster of the week, bro, not weak monster of the every single day,” Max grumbled up at the sphinx.

        “Oh my GOD,” Isaac groaned. “Enough already! You are so annoying!”

        “Ohmygosh RUDE!” Pompom gasped at Isaac, thinking he was talking back to her. “Like, dropandgiveme FIFTY?”

        “EEP!” Isaac squeaked, swiftly turning beet red. Even if he hadn’t been compelled to obey Pompom by the deadly intersection of the Student Council’s unchecked power and the Sphinx of Rules’ ability, he was helpless before the threat of getting yelled at. “I’m good, I swear! Don’t tell my mom I’m bad!”

        “...Your new henchman’s bold, Johnny, I’ll give you that,” Juvie said, watching Isaac attempt to do push-ups, “but he folds like a chair at church camp, hoss, and looks twice as uncomfortable.”

        “A folded chair can do a lot of damage,” Johnny replied. “Used to be the kinda weapon we both went for.” He looked off wistfully into the distance. “We used to hit each other with chairs a lot.”

        “...Heh.” Juvie looked off wistfully in a different direction, which symbolized the different roads they’d taken. “The only backyard wrestlin’ that I do these days... is wrestlin’ with how you turned your back on me, while in the yard of this prison.”

        Johnny closed the fist he had reopened since their battle was cut short. He frowned and looked away, this time in a different, third direction. 

        His gaze alighted at random on the purple, shifting outline of the sphinx. Johnny blinked, but the shade didn’t fade. Instead, it seemed more solid. He could make out glowing eyes—thin, sharp slivers like a cat’s. The creature was looking at his classmates, at Max and Isabel and Isaac. They were glaring back at it.

        “You silly spectral!” laughed the Sphinx of Rules, cackling as he glowered down at Isaac. “It’s a little too LATE for training, don’t you think?! Face it: you’re too WEAK to fight the full might of the RULES that I ENFORCE!”

        Isabel scowled at the heckling spirit. Spectral energy swirled from her shoulders. Even without Eightfold, without Flipflop, without Ed or Mr. Spender, even with too many witnesses and rules that tied her hands, she was more than a match for a mean little wimp like the sphinx. Stacking the rules in his favor only offered Isabel a nifty challenge.

        KTHUNK! Ptssh!

        A heavy impact and the sound of scattering gravel from behind her stole her focus. The Activity Club—and Johnny—turned to face the looming figure that had leapt down from the wall of the Detention Fortress.