⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀   ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
——

⠀⠀⠀   ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
.*･｡. WAITING FOR SUPERMAN .*･｡.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

033.
DUMB WITCHERY!
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

——

   After bringing Erica to Derek and saving her life, Scott had agreed to helped Derek find Jackson and take him down. As long as it had meant saving him, that is — not killing him.

   Scott had gone to spy on Jackson that evening and followed him to the secret hideout where they had been selling tickets to the underground rave (that same one that Matt had asked Lois to as a date, and she had lied to get out of it) and saw that he had gotten a ticket. He had originally hoped to catch the boy, or at least speak to him, but Scott had been unsuccessful in both the above areas.

   It was shaping up to be harder, than they had thought.

   Much harder.

   While Stiles had gone to see if he could interrogate his father into spilling some of the major details about the case surrounding all of the recent murders, Lois had decided to join Scott at the vets in hopes of figuring out how they were going to catch the kanima with a little help from his boss — Deaton. Seeing as he knew all about the supernatural, more than he was letting on, it had only seemed appropriate to ask him for some helpful guidance on the situation. They were out of their depth here, even Derek was out of his depth, and they were more than willing to get help from anyone if it meant stopping Jackson before the Argents did.

   It hadn't been easy to get out of the house to meet Scott. Not when Lois Lane was already grounded and her father was angry about her getting stuck in detention that afternoon, but Lois had somehow actually managed to convince her father to let her go.

   She had made up a lie about Deaton offering her a job at the clinic with Scott, filing papers and such. According to her lie, he had only being able to do the interview that evening, and after a little while of whining and pleading like an incessant child, her father had eventually let her leave the house. Only on the one condition: that she was back, as soon as it was over.

    "What's he doing here?"

   Lois lifted her head and quirked a brow at the sound of Scott's voice as he went to let Derek in through the back of the animal clinic, while she remained leaning against one of the surfaces.

    "I need him." Derek answered bluntly as he walked in like he owned the place, making Lois rolled her eyes.

   Scott frowned, "I don't trust him."

    "Yeah—? Well, he doesn't trust you, either."

   The brunette girl groaned to herself at the sound of his voice. She now understood why Scott had been complaining about the uninvited company that Derek had brought along. She ignored the questioning look that Deaton had sent her as he went out to greet the wolves, begrudgingly following in tow.

Truthfully, Lois didn't want to be around Isaac. He had been trying to kill her friend, and he had even threatened to kill her when she had shot an arrow into his shoulder — which, in a way, she couldn't blame him for...

   But that didn't meant it was okay!

She had only acted in order to protect herself. It was a case of self-defence. What was she supposed to do? Let the beta past so he could kill Lydia Martin, when it would have been based on wrong accusations? (It had been!) Funnily enough, Lois hadn't been very willing to let him get to her that night. Even if it had meant that the boy would, quite literally, have to go through her first. Lois may have been human, but she was going to put up a fight when it came to her friends. She didn't think that Isaac had expected that, so he had resorted to wanting to kill Lois, as well. All in all, it was no wonder that she didn't want to be around him.

And she didn't even want to think about having said that she was going on a date with him, to get Matt off of her case. As if.

   Lois had no idea how she was going to get away, with that one.

    "And, you know what? Derek really doesn't care." The alpha scoffed, "Now, where's the vet? Is he going to help us, or not?"

    "I guess that depends..."

   At the sound of his voice, the trio of wolves all turned to face the man, where he stood with his arms crossed in the doorway, Lois by his side with an overtly bored expression on her face. She noticed the way Isaac smirked at the sight of her, and she grit her teeth.

    "Your friend, Jackson—" Deaton continued with raised brows, curious to see how Scott would manage to get along with Derek after their past, "—are we planning to kill him, or save him?"

    "Kill him."

    "Save him."

   Scott and Derek turned to glare at each other.

   Hostility was fresh in the air, and it was suffocating.

    "Save him—!" Scott corrected. He knew that Derek couldn't refuse, seeing as had agreed to work with Scott as long as it was on Scott's terms, and not his. The boy turned back to his boss and nodded his head, "Save him."

   Deaton hummed, "Then, follow me."

   Lois turned on her heel and walked back through the clinic, not caring to wait. None of the boys could catch up with her, and she was glad about it — she was just ready to figure out some sort of plan and then get this arrangement over with. They didn't want to work with Derek and his pack any longer than they had to, which Derek's pack likely reciprocated, and she planned on sticking to that. They were going this to save Jackson and that was it. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

   Eventually the rest of the group filed it. Conveniently, Isaac had chosen to stand right next to Lois, leaning against the table in front of them, a sly grin on his lips when she shuffled slightly to the left.

   He could head her heartbeat going, and it was fast. He liked the effect that he had on her, now.

   It was addictive, like a drug.

   Deaton set a bunch of glasses onto the table, all filled with a different substance, and Isaac immediately reached an arm out to touch them. Derek snacked his hand away.

    "Watch what you touch, kid."

   When Isaac pouted, Derek rolled his eyes. "I said don't touch."

    "So, what are you?" The beta rose a brow at Deaton, over the small domestic, watching him take one of the glasses to inspect it. He smirked to himself as he observed the man, glancing between him and his set of crazy-looking potions, "Some kinda witch?"

   "Witch?" The man blinked, "No, I'm a veterinarian."

   Lois tried to hold back a snort as Isaac stared, dumbfounded by the response, and then nodded. He slowly retreated and cleared his throat awkwardly, looking away. Scott gave her a light shove and sent her a disapproving look, his eyes were unimpressed with the fact that she found it funny, to which Lois huffed. She crossed her arms against her chest and muttered something lowly about it being Isaac's fault that he was an idiot, not hers. Isaac slowly turned his head to glare at her, one that she reciprocated.

    "Unfortunately, I don't see anything here that's going to be an effective defense against a paralytic toxin." Deaton sighed.

    "We're open to suggestions," Derek shrugged.

    "What about an effective offense—?" Isaac suggested.

"We already tried," his alpha denied, thinking back to the night that Jackson had tried to hurt Danny in the club, "I nearly took its head off. And Argent emptied an entire clip into it — the thing just gets back up."

"Has it shown any weaknesses?" Deaton seemed shocked that it hadn't been stopped in its tracks, quite yet. It was like a cat; it was like it had nine lives, or potentially a whole lot more than that.

"Only one," Scott told him, "It can't swim."

His boss nodded, "Does that go for Jackson, as well?"

"No," Lois sighed, shaking her head. She had been to several of his swimming competitions with Danny and Lydia, and she was always sitting at the side when they swam in gym class. She knew how well the boy could swim, and it was almost as good as he could play lacrosse. "He's the captain of the swim team."

"Essentially, you're trying to catch two different people." The vet held up what looked to be a charm of sorts, light shining through the item as they all watched intently. They knew that he was being controlled, so it made sense. Deaton spoke again, "A puppet, and a puppeteer..." He placed the item onto the table and leant against the metal, "One killed the husband, but the other was left to take care of the wife. Do we know why?"

Derek glanced down at Lois for a second, his face stony and untelling. He thought back to the night at the pool, when he and Stiles had been stuck, and how she hadn't jumped in to help them like most people would have done for their best friend.

   It irked him, now that he thought about it — why hadn't she?

"I don't think Jackson could do it," Scott spoke up, gaining Derek's attention again. "His mother died pregnant too, and she might have been murdered."

Lois nodded once, "I don't think he could've let the same thing happen to someone else."

"How do you know it's not part of the rules?"

   With the question, Isaac stood up straight, tilting his head to the side in thought. She looked up at him, for once interested in what he had to say, "The kanima kills murderers, right? If Jackson kills the wife, then the baby dies, too."

"Does that mean your father was a murderer?"

Isaac seemed to zone out for a moment, eyes lost and glassy as he contemplated the words. Lois chewed in her lip, knowing how hard it was to speak about a lost parent, especially when it was fresh. She didn't particularly care about Isaac, but this was yet another thing that she couldn't stop her gut from twisting at. It was hard to ignore the feeling when she knew what it was like. She knew how much it hurt. Scott's question had hit him hard.

   He eventually shrugged.

"Wouldn't surprise me if he was."

"Hold on— the book says they're bonded, right?" Deaton repeated what he had been told by Lois and Scott while they had waited for Derek to arrive. "What if the fear of water isn't coming from Jackson, but from the person controlling him? And what if something that affects the kanima, also affects its master?"

Once again, Derek's eyes flickered to Lois Lane. Perhaps he was just imagining it, wanting to know who was controlling Jackson so much that it sent his mind to crazy places, but it unsettled him.

Lois hadn't jumped in the pool.

It gave the alpha an eerie feeling, one that made his eyes want to flash red and kill her there and then, but he couldn't. Derek knew that he could be impulsive, and he knew that he could be wrong when he jumped to conclusions, but this was compelling.

The fear of water came from the one controlling Jackson, and they already knew someone who was scared of water.

And she was sitting right under their noses.

"So, they're tied?" Said girl spoke up, her nose wrinkled as she thought about it. "That's good, isn't it? They're connected — two sides of the same coin."

"Meaning what?" Isaac rose a brows

   They all watched closely as Deaton drew a circle of black dust around the charm, both ends connecting to make it complete.

"Meaning we can catch them," Scott smiled, "Both of them."

——

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀   ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀