"Divine move?" the spirit wearing Stiles' face took a few steps towards the end of the hallway where the real Stiles stood, his arms still draped around Lydia's trembling shoulders. Void Stiles lowered his head like a fox ready to pounce on his prey.

Lydia couldn't believe how much his appearance had changed in a number of hours. The bags under his eyes that had already been severe were now downright inhuman, the color of his skin as pale as any of the numerous corpses of the dead that the nogitsune had left in its wake. Pale as Allison's body was by now, Lydia realized, tucked away in a drawer in the basement of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.

Stiles mustered the little strength he had left to tighten his grip on Lydia and steer her away from the monster coming toward them. They stumbled backwards as one, Stiles shifting his body so that he was shielding her from whatever came next.

Void Stiles' pace quickened as he spat at the two of them, "Divine move? You think you have any moves at all? You can kill them, but me?" He began to shout, his rage filling the hallway. "I'm a thousand years old! YOU CAN'T KILL ME!"

"But we can change you!" Lydia snapped. Void Stiles stopped dead in his tracks. For a moment his empty eyes.

"What?" he asked, careful to keep his control of the room.

"You forgot about the scroll," Stiles said to him. He looked into this stolen version of his own face, and an understanding seemed to pass between the two of them.

"Change the host," Void Stiles recited through chapped lips.

"You can't be a fox and a wolf," Stiles replied.

Before Void Stiles could say another word Scott was right behind him, his teeth sinking into the trickster's shoulder, his alpha-red eyes shone brightly in the darkened hallway. Stiles and Lydia held their breath together as they watched their friend carry out their plan to end this chaos once and for all.

But instead of screaming or collapsing to the ground, Void Stiles began to laugh. Stiles listened as a sinister, distorted version of his own familiar guffaw filled the hallway of his high school, his territory that been invaded and twisted into a battlefield.

Scott cried out and stumbled away from the trickster, water streaming from his eyes. "Scott?" Stiles shouted, "Scott, what happened?" He tried to run towards his best friend but stumbled dizzily after only a few steps, and Lydia tightened her grip on him to support his weight.

"You manukes thought it was that easy?" Void Stiles smiled as Scott doubled over in front of him. Scott's fur had receded and his face had become human again, but his fingernails were still claws and his eyes remained red as he vomited a mess of black blood and dead flies onto the floor. "Change the body of the host? I've already done that! Look at me, Scott." Void Stiles' voice quieted, but his smile remained. "Scott, it's okay." He stretched his fingers almost lovingly over Scott's shoulder and gently lifted him from his hunched over position. "Look at your brother."

Before Scott knew it he was looking straight into the achingly familiar chocolate eyes of his best friend. He knew that the real Stiles was just a few feet away, weak and in need of his help. But he still couldn't shake that feeling of loyalty to the Stiles here in front of him. That's why, angry as he was, he couldn't seem to protest when Void Stiles took his hand and carefully lifted it onto the trickster's own shoulder.

Without a warning, Void Stiles' gentle touch became forceful as he dug Scott's claws into his shoulder blade and dragged them across the left half of his chest. Flies began to crawl out of the wound and launch themselves into the air. Within a few moments an entire swarm encircled the four of them, their buzzing building in volume to a deafening hum. One by one the bugs began to land on Stiles, and though Lydia frantically brushed them off the flies covered Stiles faster than she could remove them. Stiles fell back against a locker, too weak to fight or defend himself. He sank to the floor quietly as Lydia vainly continued to try and dig him out of the swarm.

"A great game takes time. It takes strategy and planning, and above all it takes misdirection," Void Stiles explained as if he were merely teaching a class at the high school. "It only took a few moves: giving you symptoms that made you vulnerable. Sending your father on a pointless search for a cure so he'd leave you and me alone to get to know each other better at Eichen House. Threatening your little coyote bitch. And your move, Stiles, was to give me everything I needed. You gave me a body and I've made it my own like I always do." He sank to his knees and leaned in towards Stiles, who was barely clinging to consciousness. An ever-shifting coat of flies obscured most of his face from view. "Before you're dead and the two of us are finished, I just had to thank you. You've truly been a great opponent, Stiles. Or maybe we've just been a great team…"

Lydia had stopped scrambling to brush the flies off of Stiles' face. Now she sat still on the ground next to him, her fingers interlaced with his and her shoulder pressed against him.

Scott was momentarily distracted by her – something was off here, something important, and he couldn't quite place what it was. Lydia's eyes were wide as ever as they flitted back and forth between the two Stilinskis. She kept her lips shut tight to keep the bugs out of her mouth.

Then Scott realized it.

Lydia wasn't screaming.

Her eyes met Scott's and she slowly moved her head to one side, then the other. Suddenly Scott was struggling to keep a stupidly large grin from stretching across his face.

"Hey, no problem, bro," Stiles muttered weakly as he wiped a few flies from his cheek. Lydia chuckled. She wasn't sure what was about to happen next, but she could feel a change in the room. Stiles had figured something out, as usual. "You got me. You little trickster, you. That was pretty good as far as cliché villain lectures go, by the way. And I've heard quite a few so that's saying something. Wanna see another cool trick?"

Stiles gathered the little strength he had left and threw himself onto his counterpart. The two touched for the first time as Stiles gripped the trickster's neck with one hand and his wounded shoulder with the other. Void Stiles screamed out in agony as his veins bulged at Stiles' touch.

"You're right, you're the one that changed my body, idiot. Hell, you changed my whole life. You barely let me sleep. You messed me up so much that my dad was convinced he'd lose his son," Stiles uttered as his eyes grew red and tears began to stream down his face. "You made me twist a sword into my best friend's gut. You got one of my friends killed and made me terrorize everyone I care about!"

Stiles gripped the ruined Void version of himself so hard that for the first time there was pure terror in the trickster's borrowed eyes. "But you made a bad move splitting us up. While you were busy playing by your rules, you slipped up and gave me an advantage. In my game, this is what we call you being in check. You got all the pain you could ever need from everyone I love." Stiles stared straight into his own face. "Now…GIVE IT TO ME!"

Stiles' arms began to bulge as his veins grew visible and the darkened pain traveled from Void Stiles into Stiles' own body and up his arms. Void Stiles shook and spluttered, scared out of his mind and growing weaker by the second until Stiles had him pinned to the ground. The flies raced away from Stiles and into the trickster's wide open mouth, eyes, ears, every area the bugs could reach. Lydia scrambled away from the two and ran to Scott, and they watched as Stiles finished the fight that had been his own from the start.

As Stiles' strength returned to him, Void Stiles became paler and smaller until there was nearly nothing left of the corpse-like body. He evaporated into a wisp of familiar dark smoke, and Stiles was clutching nothing but air.

The hallway was deafeningly silent. Stiles brought himself up from his hands and knees, breathing heavily as he leaned himself against the nearest locker. He looked up as soon as he felt Scott and Lydia staring at him in shock.

"That was really weird," Stiles panted. Scott nodded, mouth wide open.

"Yup," Lydia replied.

"Don't worry, man," Scott said, finally remembering how to speak. "Weirder stuff has happened around here."

"True story," Stiles said, his breathing returning to normal.

Scott and Stiles walked toward each other simultaneously and hugged tightly without another word. When they let go Lydia caught hold of Stiles' hand and he squeezed hers gently as the three of them made their way towards the exit at the end of the hallway.