New smells

The bleechers were mercifully empty at the moment and after wolfing down the first of his burgers the young man took a moment to just sit and try and center himself again; The morning had been stressful, and he nominally only had one more class for the day, but he didn't want to find out if things got out of control. It hadn't happened since the change really, but for whatever ungodly reason this body began pumping addrenaline into his system at a seemingly obscene rate whenever he was stressed and a series of broken things at home left him deeply worried if it happened with a person when he lost it.

Closing his eyes, Eric took in the scents around him and just chose to try and focus on them. The smell of the recently grass was a good one, the simplicity of it always helping slow him down. The hedge was also a good one, it's coniferous branches smelling like the floor cleaners he and his family used. The treated oak boards was another one that came to him, and it was enfused with the smells of decades of rain, nicatine, beer and weed. Part of him thought about the stories the bench could tell. It'd be the kind of thing the AV club would have gone nuts over as a film project if they could sense it the way he did.

Suddenly his nose wrinkled; there was something else here. Something that he didn't recognize. It wasn't neccesarily surprising that there was something new (he'd come to understand that there were a whole host of things he'd had to learn the smell of to try and sort out his confusion after the change) but this one was wildly different from anything he'd smelled before. Beyond that he could tell whatever it was it wasn't something that was fresh and it wasn't in the wood of the crowd seating but rather under it.

Curious, he stood up and moved around to the far side, since the other side butted up against the groundskeepers garage, and as he did so he could hear movement from under there.

Little light penetrated under here but this wasn't a problem as he removed the sun glasses and saw a figure, crouched and seemingly trying to stay as still as possible, probably banking on the shadows hiding them... and in an instant Eric recognized the girls face.

Jessica Summers. Cheerleader, Academic, Rich, Humanitarian and a host of other accolades besides Jessica was without a shadow of a doubt the most popular girl in school and by all rights could have ~should have~ been back in the cafeteria surrounded by any of a thousand other people including her boyfriend Paul (who himself was a shoe in for valedictorian). Eric had never had any problems with her and few interactions outside of a few group projects but she'd never given him any grief either; the two had simply been too far apart on the social spectrum to have really had any sort of social relationship.

But as his eyes took in more of her Eric realized that Jessica changed. Her eyes, had become slitted like a cat or a lizard, her ears were pointed and stretched out like an elf, a pair of antlers like a pronghorn deer poed out from her coal black hair... his gaze taking in more inconsistancys as he noticed that it looked like a pair of small bat wings had emerged from her back, her chest was... **bigger**, a thin tail ending in a spade seemed to be slowly swaying behind her and where there should have been feet he was seeing cloven hooves.

Beyond that, the smell... this good smell... seemed to be coming from her.

A step forward suddenly caused Jessica to reach into her pocket and call over to him "Don't come any closer, I got pepper spray creep" with a slight panic.

It dawned on him how this must look. A huge, strange figure cornering a girl in a dark isolated spot and in a panic of his own he suddenly put up his hands and called over "Wait no, it's me, Eric! I was just trying to find a quiet spot and then I... noticed something under the bench I'm not gonna try anything I'm not that kind of guy" her babbled, his brain going into over drive to think of a way out of this he began stumbling backwards.. and getting glaring sunlight directly into his eyes as he stumbled out from underneath.

"Eric Cooper? You're a changed?" she called over to him, her voice a little calmer.

Fumbling with the sunglasses (and having to consciously try and not ruin them with his nervous hands) he looked back at her "Changed? Is... is that what they're calling it?"

"It's what we're calling it" Jessica said back from under the bench. "Do... do you want to talk about it?"

He froze. Nothing in his life up to this point had really prepared him for something like this, with the only people he'd really been able to talk about stuff with had been either his parents or the occasional guidance councilor. Neither of whom had any frame of reference for what he was going through. And at the same time it was a beautiful, popular girl who a month ago had been practically a hemisphere removed from him socially doing it.

"Yeah, yeah I think I would."