I sat on Scott's bed next to Scott as Kira paced back and forth because of a picture taken way back when had a girl in it that looked just like her.

A girl named Malia had come from Eichen House to give it to Scott and give him a message.

"This looks just like me," Kira said as she stopped pacing, flipping it over to see the date that said 1943. "This has to be my grandmother."

"You remember when I told you about Malia?" Scott asked. "She's the last one that saw Stiles at Eichen House."

"This picture and this . . . " I trailed off, grabbing the sword inside it's sheath. "They found it with a body buried in a wall. The same backwards five the oni put on us was on the wall. It sounds like it all goes back to your family. Your mother, your grandmother . . ."

Kira's phone vibrated. She picked it up to look at the text, then looked to us.

"What is it?" Scott asked.

"My dad," she answered.

Stiles had gone after him. Well, not the real Stiles, but the Nogitsune.

*

Scott and I pushed the doors to the school open, us and Kira running down the hall to her father's classroom with her father and mother inside.

Her father was on the floor gagging, choking as her mother knelt next to him, the instant she saw Kira she was asking, "Kira, did you bring it?"

Kira knelt next to her and her father as she handed the tube to her mother. "You going to tell me what it is?"

"Reishi."

"You're not seriously giving Dad magic mushrooms?" Kira asked what sounded like a statement.

Her mother put one in her father's mouth. After he swallowed, he took a napkin and coughed blood and a fly inside.

He started to stand as Kira's mother asked, "Are you okay?"

He barely moved his head in a nod as she stood and he sat against his desk.

"Stiles did this?" Scott asked.

Kira's mother turned back to us. "He wanted the last kaiken." She held out the dagger that was a physical representation of her tail. Her last one, apparently. "I've kept this near me ever since your friend disappeared."

"You've gone to extremes to try to kill the Nogitsune," I remarked. I gestured to the kaiken, then put my hand back at my side. "If that's the last tail, it means it's the strongest."

"Yes," she answered, seeming surprised that I even knew that.

I had Laura to thank for all of the things I knew.

"Mom, you need to tell us everything," Kira said.

She nodded, Scott handing her the picture. "Where did you get this?",

“Is it Grandma?" Kira asked.

"No," her mother answered. "It's me."

*

"If that's you, then you'd have to be, like, 90 years old," Scott said.

"Closer to 900," Kira's mother answered.

"Okay, sure," Kira said. "Why not?" She looked at her father. "Dad, how old are you?"

"43," her father answered. "But I've been told I look mid-30s."

Scott leaned closer to me as he whispered in my ear, "Did you know kitsunes could age like that?"

"Why do you think I know everything?" I replied just as quietly.

"You seem to know a lot more than the rest of us."

Kira looked down to the sword and sheath in her hands. She handed it out to her mother, which she took.

She held it over her husband's desk as Kira, Scott and I watched in slight confusion.

Kira's mother took out the broken blade, pouring the broken pieces of the katana onto the desk. "The blade was shattered the last time it was used."

"When was that?" I asked.

"1943. Against a Nogitsune."

"All this, it's happened before, hasn't it?" Scott asked.

"Yes."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Kira's father told us.

"Where did it come from?" Kira asked.

"It was an internment camp in World War ||," Kira's mother started her story. "In Oak Creek not too far from here."

Scott looked at Kira's father. "Hold on. You told Allison and Isaac that there was no internment camp at Oak Creek."

"Allison's family has a certain history of violence," Kira's father explained. Understatement. But they seemed to have been helping Derek and me here a lot recently. "I didn't know if she could be trusted. There was a camp, yes. But all the records were erased."

"They covered it up," Kira's mother explained.

Kira's father opened a drawer. "When I was a grad student," he pulled out a book and closed the drawer, "my passion project, actually more like an obsession, was trying to dig up the truth on Oak Creek." The book had multiple old photos, shifting through them until he looked up at his wife. "That's how I met your mother, Kira."

Kira picked up a picture of a burned body in a hospital bed. "So, where did the Nogitsune come from?"

"Isn't it obvious yet?" Kira's mother asked her, then looked away. "It came from me."

*

Kira's mother went on to explain how she had stolen for the Japanese-Americans in the Oak Creek internment camp. Medicines, apples. Even aspirin for an elderly woman with headaches once a month, always planning the game of Go.

She was also trying to order the sword into one piece as she looked up at her daughter. "Kira, I need your help on this. There isn't much time. And this is something that needs to be done in the daylight."

"Not until you tell us everything," Kira replied.

"Tell them, Noshiko," Kira's father told her. "Tell them what they need to know."

Noshiko looked toward me and Scott. "Wolves and foxes tend not to get along. Not just in fables and stories."

"But allies, however unlikely, should be welcomed " Kira's father said. "Especially in times of war."

Noshiko slammed a piece of the sword on the table as if saying fine.

*

And she was stalling.

By telling us she had a forbidden love with one of the MTs named Rhys.

"Okay, stop," Kira told her. "Just stop. We don't want to hear your Casablanca story. We wanna know how to save Stiles."

"I'm trying to tell you," Noshiko said.

"You're trying to stall," I said.

"When the sun goes down, the oni are gonna come after him, aren't they?" Scott asked.

"Your friend's gone, Scott," Kira's father said.

"I don't think you know that for sure."

"You brought the oni," I told Noshiko. "Can you call them off?"

"It's not his fault," Kira said.

Noshiko looked at Scott. "Stiles may be your best friend, and he may be like a brother to you, but he is Nogitsune now. He is void."

"Can you call them off?" I repeated, stressing the words.

"When you hear the rest of the story, you won't want me to."

*

And again with the love story.

"Rhys and I found a way to see each other. Sometimes at the barracks. Sometimes in the bunkers where they parked military vehicles. He was being transferred to North Africa in a few weeks. I was teaching him some French."

Like coup de foudre, French for bolt of lightning, but why was she telling us this?

That's right. Stalling.

*

"We watched Merrick and Hayes talking with the camp doctor. They were whispering, talking quickly."

She was so lost in the past she didn't realize she was gripping a sword piece so tightly she drew blood, blood dripping to the desk.

"Noshiko," Kira's father said.

"Mom, what are you doing?" Kira asked.

Noshiko dropped the sword piece, her husband handing her a cloth to wipe away the blood.

As she did, she showed us the blood-stained skin, but the cut was healed.

"How did you do that?" Kira asked.

"It's one of our talents," Noshiko answered. "Something you'll learn, Kira. You should've noticed by now that you never get sick. Ever. You'll never experience something as simple as a common cold. Something as bad as the flu. Or something like pneumonia."

*

The M and B had been missing so they couldn't treat them. Noshiko hadn't taken them, but they had none.

"Rhys checked his log. But we already knew what was happening. Dr. Liston was using Merrick and Hayes to sell medicine at the black market.

*

Because of this Dr. Liston and Merrick and Hayes, many people had died, including the child named Michio, the child that both Noshiko and Rhys had given the baseball.

And that was the start of the tragedy.

*

Noshiko told us how the boy's father wanted revenge, to take on the MTs and the doctor, but Noshiko's friend Rinko, the girl, had tried to stop him. The elderly lady with the migraines and the game agreed with Michio's father.

"I had realized the mistake I had made by speaking too soon. I wasn't helping anyone. I was inciting a riot."

*

"I yelled for them to stop. But so many people were sick. And so many were dying. I'd never seen anger like that. It was a living, breathing thing."

*

Merrick had hit the elderly woman, and Michio's father's fire starter, well . . .

"Now I knew why Satomi was always trying to keep quiet. Why she got migraines once a month, and why she was always at the game of Go. It kept her calm."

"She was bitten," I concluded.

"Bitten werewolves have a harder time suppressing their anger," Noshiko said. "One unexpected flare up and they could lose all control."

*

Satomi the elderly werewolf had shifted in front of everyone, taking the bottle of alcohol and fire from Michio's father's hand before throwing it directly to Rhys and setting him ablaze.

And it had tore Noshiko apart.

*

Noshiko had been shot. As had a lot of others.

They were still putting the pieces of the sword together as Noshiko said, "The gunfire had nearly killed me. I don't know how many bullets made their way into my body, but I fought every one of them. It left my body so weak, my heartbeat so slow, it appeared as though I was dead. But even then, I was still better off than Rhys. His screams could be heard throughout Eichen House, echoing through every room, every hallway. He died in agony. The doctor, it seems, also sold the morphine. Merrick and Hayes were given the task to get rid of all of the bodies, both the American and the Japanese-American. They were transferring out Dr. Liston as well, stationing him somewhere else." Noshiko turned away, looking out of the window with tears in her eyes. "They were covering it up. The doctor, Merrick, Hayes, and all the others. They were gonna get away with murder. By chance, I guess, Rhys' body had been put next to mine."

*

"I wanted the soldiers and the administration of the camp to be punished for their crime. But I knew the clock was ticking. I was going to lose my chance. They were going to burn me with the others. I couldn't fight back with my body weakened and still healing. I could barely move. I was going to die. With time slipping through my fingers, I knew I was making a terrible decision. But I could not die knowing they were going to get away. So I called out to our ancestors for kitsune-tsuki. Possession by a fox spirit. For a powerful Nogitsune, one that feeds off of chaos, strife and pain to take control of my weakened body, imbue it with power and use it as a weapon. But calling on a trickster spirit is a dangerous thing. They can have a very dark sense of humor. Because while the Nogitsune did come to poss someone, it wasn't me."

*

It had possessed Rhys' dead body. Rhys' dead, mummified body to cover the burns covering every inch of his body. He had killed Merrick and Hayes.

"What happened?" Scott asked.

"My body was beginning to heal," Noshiko answered. "And I managed to pull myself up from the ground. But it was too late."

*

"What did it do?" Scott asked.

"It brought chaos, strife and more pain than you can imagine," Noshiko answered.

*

The remaining of the Japanese-Americans in the Oak Creek internment camp had ran from the Nogitsune in Rhys' dead, mummified body.

*

When Noshiko had gotten there, everyone had been slaughtered.

"I had to find him," Noshiko said. "I had to stop him." She had used the weapon, the katana she and Kira were still trying to piece together. "Kira, hurry. Night is coming."

*

Noshiko had gone after the Nogitsune.

The elderly werewolf Satomi had helped her kill him, running the sword through.

When she had took it out, the blade had shattered.

*

Noshiko put the last piece together after she had told us the last thing Rhys had told her was the French phrase she had taught him. Coup de foudre.

"The literal translation is 'a bolt of lightning.' In French, it can also mean 'love at first sight'." Scott looked at me while I looked down at the broken jigsaw puzzle of a katana sword. "But a bolt of lightning is exactly what we need right now."

"For what?" Kira asked.

"Excising the Nogitsune from Rhys' body shattered the katana," Noshiko explained. "But you can put it back together."

"Why don't you just do it yourself?"

"Because I'm not a thunder kitsune. Do you trust me?"

"I just found out you're 900 years old. I don't think I'm ever gonna trust you again."

"Trust me on this."

Noshiko took Kira's hand. Kira looked to Scott and me, then back to the sword as her mother held her hand above it.

The sword clattered and clicked and glowed as a wave of magnetism started to put the sword magically back together as Kira, Scott and I watched awed silence.

*

Kira gasped as she took her hand away from the shattered katana sword that she had just made whole.

Noshiko smiled a little as she raised it from the desk, turning to face Kira, holding it out to her. "Go ahead. It's yours now."

"What if I don't want it?" Kira asked.

"You need it."

She threw the katana sword toward Kira, who caught it with one hand and twirled it forward, grabbing the hilt with her other too.

"You see?" Noshiko asked. "It gives you balance. My power is yours now, Kira. If the oni can't stop Stiles, you have to. The same as I did." She looked toward Scott and me. "And maybe seek out a few wolves to help you."

"You didn't tell us anything," I said.

"You want to save Stiles? Kill him. That's the only way."

I looked toward Kira's father. "You agree with this?"

"Sometimes history does repeat itself, Tara," Kira's father told me. My eyebrows furrowed. How did he know my name? "You know it does. It's repeated for your family. And it can happen again."

I looked toward Noshiko. "Only if you don't learn."

"But sometimes even then, fate conspires against you," Kira's father said.

Scott's phone buzzed. He took it out, showing me the text from Allison.

Derek and Tara's loft.

That was where Stiles was?

Scott looked up Noshiko. "There's a way to save him. There has to be."

We both turned for the door, walking out into the hall. Kira started to follow until Noshiko said, "Kira." She turned back as her mother handed over the katana's sheath.

Kira took it, putting the sword inside. Then she followed after Scott and me as we were on our way to my home.