Shusui stuck his upper body out of the open window and looked around, but saw no sign of his absent roommate. “Think we were too hard on the kid?”
From the doorway Saori shrugged. “You know Hyosuke. He’s stubborn. If we’re not hard on him he’ll remain same old, same old Hyosuke.”
“Yeah, but for him to go to these lengths not to talk to us… Maybe we were having a little too much fun with him,” he said, taking one last look outside.
Saori walked across the room and lazily draped herself across her boyfriend’s body. “Come on. He may be an idiot, but he’s a self-sufficient idiot. I’m sure he’s-” Her voice trailed off as she spotted something left behind in the room. Two somethings, actually.
“How many pairs of shoes does he own?” she asked, sounding a bit more concerned than before.
“Just his sneakers; can’t remember the last time I saw him in dress shoes,” Shusui replied. Not that he’d notice a detail like that, but Saori was another matter. Quickly (for her) she crossed Hyosuke’s room and opened his closet, revealing a pair of slightly dust-covered loafers still lying on the floor.
“I’ll need my coat…” Shusui said. “Call me if he comes back before I find him.” He was met at the door with his jacket and a good luck kiss, before heading out into the moonlit night.
Hyosuke found an alley two blocks away and leaned back against a dumpster as he fought to get his breath back. That was a close call. He had almost-
Wait, what was it he had successfully evaded? A thank you, possibly a conversation with not just a pretty girl, but one he was head over heels for? No wonder his roommates thought he was hopeless. Being in a girl’s presence should not cause mortal panic… and now that he thought about it, jumping into a fight with two armed assailants really should cause panic! How was it possible to get those two natural human reactions mixed up? Well, that was only partly a rhetorical question; he was well used to his paralyzing fear of attractive members of the opposite sex by now. But fearless vigilante? That was a new one.
No doubt it had something to do with the physical changes… the hair, the snout, the increased strength and speed. There was no need to look into a mirror to figure out what was wrong. Lycanthropy might have been fictional until tonight, but the effects were pretty damn obvious. If common knowledge about werewolves had any similarity with reality, then the change was probably temporary… at least until the next full moon. So at some point he would most likely change back, but what to do about it until then?
“Hey Dogface! Yeah, you!”
Hyosuke peeked over the top of the dumpster and instantly felt fear grip his heart again. Somehow Taniko had followed him. She was even more out of breath than he was, and she still smelled slightly of fear, but there was a much more pungent aroma of anger coming from her.
“Why the hell’d you run off? I didn’t even get a chance to thank you for dealing with those goons.”
The alley he had unwisely chosen dead-ended behind him without any doors or windows to escape through. For the first time, he was starting to understand what claustrophobia felt like. She advanced towards him, an act which caused part of Hyosuke to marvel. Here she was, nearly as afraid as he was, yet she was able to control her fear so easily. The image of Taniko in his mind as the perfect woman became even more perfect.
Still, though, time to flee. But he was boxed in. What to do, how to get out of here…
‘Knock her down, she’s small! Or roar right in her face! You can smell her fear, she’ll probably faint or run screaming her head off…’
The voice in his head was foreign, but he knew what it was. It was the werewolf inside him… it too had a fight or flight instinct, and unlike him, it was permanently stuck on fight. He could feel the desire to attack well up inside him, but as it did, a cool, calming presence to soothe that rage emanated from his hand, where he still clutched his silver crescent moon.
“Not safe, you have to go…” he managed to say gutturally, using what little room he had to back away.
“I’m not leaving without answers, or at least a name,” she said firmly. “Who did this to you? Or have you always been this way?”
The closer she got, the more his enhanced senses flooded his mind with facts about the intimidating yet cute girl. She smelled like perfume, but there were lingering whiffs of shampoo behind it. Her heels clacking on the dirty cement cut through the ambient noise and echoed in his ears. The features of her face - the distance between her nostrils, each and every eyebrow hair - stood out as though he were examining her with a magnifying glass. It was sensory overload, and in his panicked state of mind it only amplified his fight or flight reflex. And in spite of the silver charm, the werewolf’s voice was starting to get louder in his head.
“Can’t… Sorry!”
He leapt, not like a man, but like the man beast he had become. Two floors above hung a fire escape; his sudden added weight nearly ripped out the bolts holding it to the wall. He only needed it for a moment, as he hung from the rusted metal just long enough to launch himself into the sky with his two powerful arms. A couple window sills later, and he was on the roof, running for his life once more.
On the rooftops without the buildings blocking his vision, the full moon hung large over the night’s sky. Here, bathing in the lunar radiance, Hyosuke began to feel euphoric; it was a very strange feeling to be getting drunk on sight alone. He felt free, like he could just turn his thoughts off and let himself run to his heart’s content.
“Get away from me!”
It was a woman’s voice that brought him back to reality; a stranger’s this time. Before he could think about it he was bounding towards the cry for help. Peering over the edge of the roof, he could see a short woman. She was a young woman, smaller than Taniko, with a light pink coat buttoned all the way up against the cold. More fascinating however was her assailant.
The beast turned and looked straight up at Hyosuke. From up high he could distinctly see the other werewolf’s nostrils flare as he snarled at the challenger.
Once more he leapt, but this time it was down, straight at the villain. The other werewolf tried to dive out of the way, but Hyosuke grabbed a flagpole on his way down and adjusted his trajectory. His large furred foot made contact with the ribcage of the creature, who let out a chillingly painful yelp that only the seriously injured could make.
Immediately his foe darted away, holding its side and peering back over its shoulder every now and again to see if Hyosuke was going to follow it. And it was tempting to the other Hyosuke.
‘After him! Beat him down! Put the fear of hell into him should he ever show his face again!’
Hyosuke clenched the silver moon even more firmly, willing the werewolf’s voice back to the recesses of his mind. More and more questions were surfacing… whatever was happening to him was happening to others as well, apparently. But were they struggling with their new added natures as he was, or were they embracing them?
He turned to see if the woman being attacked was alright; only it occurred to him that once again he had just put himself in close quarters with an attractive girl. Her reaction was slightly different than Taniko’s however… she was too busy leaning against lamppost and clutching her sides to thank her rescuer.
Next to the woman on the ground, a rock that gleamed suspiciously like the moon rock in the museum had apparently fallen from the other werewolf’s grasp.
Sun Jan 12 14:16:53 2014
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