The Nogitsune – A fox spirit of chaos and madness with no sense of camaraderie to friends or foe alike. All it existed for was spreading as much chaos and pain as it could before being killed, exorcized or sealed away.

After Tristan killed off its former body that it expended a lot of its strength to reconstruct, and even meld together to force a fusion, it was left weak but it did gain something from the effort it put in raising up Ethan and Aiden’s body. 

……

“This will be very interesting.”

“What is?” Malia asked. 

“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking to myself.” Boyd replied. “Shit, it’s jammed.” Boyd cursed as his locker refused to open up. 

“Scoot over.” Malia casually pushed him away and used a little bit of her strength to pull it open. “There. Fast and efficient.”

Boyd was alarmed but ended up sighing in relief after making sure that Malia didn’t just bust up his locker. 

“What?” She asked as he kept staring at her. 

“Damn. What I wouldn’t give to have bona fide super strength. It’s like comic stuff playing right in front of me.” Boyd said, dejectedly shaking his head as he did. “You think Tristan would agree to turn me into a vampire if I ask long enough?”

Bonk!

“Hey, what’s that for?” Boyd cradled his hurting head while watching Malia walking away. 

“For asking me something stupid, Boyd!”  She yelled as she disappeared into the crowd. 

“It’s not… stupid.” He ended up muttering before going back to sort out his books. 

“Um, hey, hello.” 

“Oh, hey Kira.” He turned around and saw the newest complicated addition to the long line of Beacon Hills supernatural rooster. “You missed school yesterday, why? Though I think I can already guess.”

“Y-yeah.” She could only awkwardly agree. Overwhelming was a bit tame a word to describe what the entire day yesterday felt like. “How do you, you know, cope with it?”

“Cope?” Boyd asked in confusion. “Oh, I think you mean how accepting I am of everything I know.”

“Yeah, basically.” She nodded. 

Boyd shrugged nonchalantly as they walked to their class. “Well, I just roll with it, but I guess that’s the effect of spending too much time with Tristan. Honestly speaking, I still haven’t gotten that used to the craziness that happens around them practically every week.”

“You handle it pretty well. At least most of the time.” Said a voice behind them. 

“Kyaah!” Kira screamed in fright, greatly startled at how Tristan just silently appeared behind them. “Can you please not do that again?” 

“Do what?” Tristan asked with his face looking completely oblivious to Kira’s plight. 

Kira looked at Boyd while wordlessly pointing at Tristan. ‘Is he for real?’ her expression seemed to say. 

Boyd shrugged again. “Probably genuinely oblivious or he’s acting that way so he doesn’t have to explain, apologize, or talk much in general.”

They had barely entered the classroom when the school’s fire alarm started going off and prompting the confused students to start leaving the school building. 

“What is going on now?” Someone asked but nobody could provide an answer. 

Fortunately, the alarms stopped and it was announced that it was a false trigger and the students were led back in. 

“Well that was spontaneous.” Boyd said with irritation as they finally managed to pushed their way through the sea of students back into their classroom. 

After that was the routine Tristan had been following for months now; class, practice, class, home.

When school ended, Tristan noticed that Kira was lounging around them and was exchanging some kind of secret gestures with her father when she thought no one was looking. And that was when he first noticed it. 

The first thing that drew his attention was Lydia who was looking everywhere with a lost expression on her face. 

“Lydia, is something wrong?” He asked but she shushed him with a finger and kept looking around in bewilderment and distress. 

“Lydia. What is it?” He asked again, a bit forcefully this time, and managed to catch her focus. 

“I don’t know. It’s like an alarm, and it keeps getting louder and louder for some reason.” She was holding a hand over her ears and was wincing in pain as she said that. 

“Everyone get back.” He told them before reining in his breath and expanding his senses to cover the entire parking lot. He didn’t know what he was looking for but based on Lydia’s pained expression, something was about to happen in the coming moments. 

He expanded all of his senses, quickly picking up the budding dread from Lydia and the unease from the others, which was when he picked up something – the school bus horn. 

His nose, ears, eyes and blood sense all expanded towards the bus that was still loading up students. 

“Shit!” He broke off into a run towards the bus, surprising the others who soon followed behind, crossing the wide lot in seconds to stand at the bus entrance. 

“Everyone, GET OUT NOW!” His instincts spurred on his compulsion to the few students at the entrance who immediately ran out, prompting the others to do so as he kept shouting and compelling more to leave. 

“Get back!” The next second he was in front of his friends, specifically Boyd, Allison and Lydia, with his hands spread out as if wanting to cover them and that was when it happened. 

BOOOOOM! 

The school bus exploded with a rocking blaze, sending debris and metal shrapnel flying in every direction. 

He used the instance of the explosion to create a wall of blood behind him for a brief moment to shield all of them from the flying shrapnel and dispersed it in the very next second. 

“Are you guys alright?” Though he asked, his blood sense had already scanned them for any injury other than some bruises from the force of the explosion that threw them to the ground. 

“I-I think we’re good.” Malia winced at the loud ringing in her ears. “Oh my God!” She gasped when she finally looked around and saw the state of buildings and a few students that didn’t have the protection Tristan gave them. 

Heat and smoke filled the air and their lungs that they had to go far away before they could even open their eyes without the teary irritation of the black smoke from the flames. 

Tristan however left them as soon as they could breathe in fresh air and ran towards the students nearest to the explosion and used the umbrella of the panicked screams and thick smoke to used thin tendrils of blood to pull out the shrapnels that were more lethal and easier to remove, and left small amounts of his blood in their system to keep their vitality up. 

Luckily for everyone involved, no students died but a handful of them were injured, with two losing their eyes and a third her voice. 

Tristan’s impressive control of his blood over moderate distances was what enabled him to help stabilize a lot of the students who were almost crossing death’s doors. 

Other students and teachers ran into the smoke to help the injured students while Tristan silently slipped away from area. 

It was already bad enough that he was the one who warned of the bomb and that was more attention than he ever needed focused on him at any point. 

“What the hell…” Allison stared disbelievingly at the unfolded chaos before their eyes. If Tristan had been just a few seconds late to realize what was happening, a lot of the students would have been dead in a matter of seconds. 

“That guy… was it William Barrow?” Boyd asked, visibly shaken at the scenery of blood and fire painted a few meters away from them. 

“I have no idea. Maybe the police missed the bomb during their sweep when they apprehended him.” Tristan replied in an even tone. He turned to the person that looked the most shocked, Lydia, and slightly chopped at her nape to knock her out. “She was seconds away from breaking down with a severe panic attack and high blood pressure.”

He effortlessly lifted her up and kept her in the back seat of his car along with Boyd before he and Malia got in and drove off with Allison, Kira, Stiles and Scott following behind them. 

“It’s the Nogitsune.” Tristan said while driving. “This was probably his plan when he controlled William Barrow.”

“Wait, back up! When did the Nogitsune control William Barrow?” Boyd asked startled. 

“His surgery and flies coming out of his gut? That’s a dead giveaway.”

“So that means he might currently be possessing someone in school, teacher or student. I don’t think it’ll do good for the rising public unrest if sword-wielding ghost ninjas start popping up and attacking them all in the name of checking to see if they are possessed or not.” Malia said with a grim look cast over face. 

Tristan briefly regretted killing the Nogitsune when he did. It would have been infinitely better for everyone involved if it were to be caught and bound in chains than letting it move freely by changing bodies. 

.

. 

.

Read up to 20 chapters ahead on my patreøn

Patreøn*com/Draul_TheOminous