Sam called out a quick goodbye to his mother and Bajoo as he headed out the door to his good friend Kaylin's house. As the teen walked through the wide streets of his suburban neighborhood he began to notice something odd. He'd thrown on a quick disguise in order to prevent any of the neighbors from noticing his bearish changes but even though it was already 10am in the morning, hardly anyone was out and about. The streets were practically dead and anyone he saw quickly ducked back into their house. "Hi there Mr. Jones," he called out to the portly middle-aged man who lived three houses down.
Mr. Jones was standing on his front porch and looking down at his hands. Even from the street Sam could tell that they were oddly grey, almost as if he'd dipped them in a crackly grey paint. At Sam's greeting Mr. Jones looked up and Sam swore he saw the start of a short white horn growing out of the middle of his neighbor's nose before the man stepped back inside his darkened house and slammed the front door shut.
Sam continued his walk and took a left onto Kaylin's street. As he passed by the open window of the house on the corner he could hear the loud, low woofing of a large dog occasionally interrupted by the higher-pitched yaps of a smaller canine. He found the barking strange because he'd never known that house to have dogs of any kind. Not thinking much of it, Sam mentally shrugged and continued onward.
As Sam reached Kaylin's house, he jumped over the side fence and into the backyard, barely keeping his balance due to the large fisherman's boots he was wearing. All of the house blinds were tightly drawn, which struck Sam as fairly unusual. He continued underneath the raised deck and to the French doors that led into the basement. Giving them a quick knock, Sam waited. When the doors opened, however, it was his good friend Jesse who was standing there rather than Kaylin. "Ummm, nice costume, dude," Jesse said raising his eyebrows at Sam's choice of clothing. Jesse always liked to play it cool and today was apparently no exception.
As far as he could tell, Jesse was unchanged although Sam did notice that his friend was wearing a long sleeved tee-shirt that was oddly bunched-up around his upper arms and belly. Jesse usually preferred shorts, even during the winter, but Sam saw that he was now wearing baggy jeans. Apparently Sam was not the only one to go with some odd wardrobe choices. Sam hardly had time to take note of the lump protruding from the seat of Jesse's jeans before he was distracted by the bizarre sight of Kaylin, who was sitting on a couch at the other end of the room. The blonde haired, brown eyed teen was fully wrapped in a blanket from head-to-toe with only his face sticking out.
"Just call me Obi Wan, the Jedi master," Kaylin joked as it was Sam's turn to raise his bushy eyebrows. Kaylin was a huge Star Wars fan and so it wasn't entirely surprising that he was trying to break the ice with a Star Wars joke. Wrapped up in the big blanket, Kaylin looked so ridiculous that Sam had to laugh. "I know we've been friends for a long time now so I can tell when the both of you are hiding something," Sam started off. He could see Kaylin begin to blush and Jesse hang his head a bit as the lump in his jeans twitched. "Something is happening to us -all of us- and I guess I've gotta be the first to own it. Finishing his little speech, Sam...