likeblueblazes | You are the moon that breaks the night for which I have to howl.

When the storm begins, Ophelia is alone in her apartment, trying to convince herself that she isn't afraid. She jumps at every burst of lightning and the thunder reverberates in her bones; she paces around her living room, still sparsely decorated in the original furniture bestowed by the city. She is a de Luce, damn it all, and she is not allowing a stupid thunder storm to entirely interrupt her evening.

At a particularly loud crack of thunder, she all but leaps over the sofa, coming to land on all fours with a practiced grace she typically does not retain in her frightened state of being. She stands up abruptly when the smell of rain becomes almost overwhelming and she finds her ears filled with the conversations of her neighbors all around her, some of which make her flush from the language of them.

Another flash of lightning, and Ophelia catches sight of herself in the reflection of her window; her mouth drops open at the sight: her beautiful hair, once called the color of beaten honey, is now silver as the moon, and her eyes have faded from their once brilliant blue into a golden color. On top of that, she has ears like a dog protruding from beneath her hair, and her nails have elongated into claws.

She lets out a blood-piercing scream at the sight before bolting towards her bathroom at a speed as fast as the lightning outside her window. She almost rips the door off its hinges as she bursts inside, turning the light on and throwing her arms on the sink to steady herself. When she looks closer, she realizes her teeth have become sharper as well, and, if possible, she further pales.

Frightened out of her wits to the point where she is not thinking with clarity or reason, Ophelia turns again and runs, this time out of her bathroom and her apartment, slamming the door behind her as she leaps through the hallway and out into the storm-covered night.

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After running into Jennifer looking every bit the part of an inu hanyou, InuYasha didn't think that anything else could faze him today. Being human at the wrong time is one thing, his hair now black and hanging over his shoulders, but it's quite another to feel like his demonic powers have been simply lifted from him and pushed into another person. Unnerving and unpredictable. The difference between something disappearing and something running around in the evening, impossible to contain.

But a displacement, at least, has some limits. One for one. Only one body to think and worry about as he sets about trying to find a solution.

Until he catches another glint of silver speeding right by him, and his eyes widen as he turns his body around to try and run after her.

"Oi!" he yells, alarmed as he flails, trying to grab her attention. "Oi, oi! Stop! I can help you!"

Which is... probably a lie. But at her speed, InuYasha knows he only has that split second to get her attention.

Edited 2014-06-06 05:15 (UTC)

Ophelia doesn't note where she's running to, or for how long. She falls into an almost trance, focused only on her heart beating in time with her footsteps against the pavement as she all but leaps across the city, trying to cope with the recent changes in her due to the storm. She feels as though she has gone mad, fallen through a rabbit hole to an entirely new world in a strangely altered state.

What in blue blazes could have done this to her? She asks herself as she runs. Surely not the storm itself, though that presents itself as the only possible explanation. Surely, this is some trick chemical of Flavia's, making her see things and giving her a fright. But no, even the first possibility makes more sense than that.

She's caught up in these thoughts and speeding through town when she hears a voice call out to her, with what she thinks is a promise to help. She skids to a halt before pivoting and running back towards the man who shouted at the same pace as before, not even exhausted when she gives him the once over, hoping she'd heard him right.

"Did you say you can help?" She demands more than asks.

InuYasha leans away slightly when the girl comes careening back in his direction, blinking and hiding away from the dirt that gets kicked up in her fast approach. Sniffing and rubbing at his nose, InuYasha nods behind a frown. There are some things he can help with, at least, even if his advice probably won't be as extensive as the young woman probably wants. She doesn't look too fond of her new body.

InuYasha certainly doesn't care for the downgrade of his.

"Your body right now has powers that I had for years," he explains, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "I can't change you back, but I can teach you how to keep from breaking everything you come across. And I can show you places that won't hurt your nose so much with the smell."

His eyes glance over her body. So far, the two people who have grabbed onto his power have been young women. Something about that grates almost as much as losing his powers to begin with. It's as though the city deliberately tried to drop his powers in the hands of people he doesn't know how to speak to.

Ophelia stops in front of the man, arms folded across her chest as her foot taps, both with impatience and frustration. He most likely cannot return her to her old self, but he does promise help, which is more than she had when she first bolted out into the storm. She watches him nod behind a frown, waits for the explanation.

She is not going to spend the rest of her life with dog ears.

"These are your powers?" She asks, nose wrinkling in confusion. She sighs at him not being able to revert her back to normal, but she does perk up a bit at the smelling bit. Some of the scents she's picked up on just in her short while of possessing these powers are the most obscenely odious things she's ever smelled in her life, to the point where her newly transformed eyes begin to water. "Please, teach me everything you know. I don't particularly care for having dog ears, thank you very much."

She keeps her arms firmly crossed in front of her chest, watching him right back as he observes her. She wonders what he's thinking, and what he makes of someone else with his abilities.

It's aggravating, seeing someone else with his powers. Not because InuYasha's unaccustomed to being around demons, or even other hanyou such as himself — but instead, because this is something that's been forced randomly on people, and something which they can't even begin to understand with only a couple of days under their belt. For now, he's sure that the concerns of Jennifer and this new woman are the first things that they've brought up. Not caring for the dog ears. Not caring for the appearance. Smelling things too strongly.

But they have no concept of the true difficulty of being in the center of two forces so often at odds. He sighs, and gestures for the young woman to follow him, hoping that there will be something that returns these girls back to their normal states sooner rather than later.

"We can either head to the park, or out into the countryside. The countryside will be quieter, and cleaner, and more private. It's also further away, which is a problem for me, since something managed to turn me human recently. I don't care for it," confesses InuYasha, tilting his head and cracking his neck. "Yes, what you are now is what I used to be. I've been trying to track down whatever is responsible, hoping that it's some kind of witch or whatever. But I think it's the city's doing."

She wonders what this experience must be like on the opposite end of the spectrum, for someone used to their own powers to suddenly find themselves lacking in them. Ophelia isn't overly fond of gaining new powers, herself; she imagines it must feel like losing a limb to the other man, and she feels a twinge of sympathy for him. She hopes this situation can reverse itself soon, for both their sakes.

She follows him without hesitation as he gestures her to do so, just wanting to receive any and all help offered.

"The countryside will be fine," she says, startled by the fact that Darrow even has a countryside. "I've never seen Darrow's countryside; I wish I'd known about it sooner. I grew up there, myself." She gets wistful, thinking of Buckshaw; she can't help herself.

"You think the city gave me your powers and turned you human?" Ophelia wrinkles her nose, trying to process it. "Can a city even do that?"

But considering how she looks now, she supposes she can't be surprised.

InuYasha waves them both in the direction of the countryside. The distance won't be quite as easy for him to breach as usual, but they have a lot to talk about in the time before getting there. He's slightly surprised by how easily she buys his explanation, but it's possible that along with his powers, she gained some level of intuition. There are things that heightened senses pick up on that most people don't realize. Listen close, and one might hear the beat of a heart, and be able to track the speed of the pulse.

"It doesn't necessarily have to be the city itself, I just use the city to refer to... whatever it is that brought me here," InuYasha says, scratching at the back of his neck as they walk. Interestingly, the young woman doesn't seem to be getting as many stares at InuYasha himself did back in the day.

Probably because her clothing, if nothing else, is still normal.

"Whatever it was is powerful, and definitely powerful enough to make something like this happen, I think."

You are the moon that breaks the night for which I have to howl.

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