Bittersweet

Chapter 1: The Reason We Wear Helmets

Hiding behind a pillar, he admitted that the thing Newt had in his case looked bigger up close. With a large luminescent horn and an even larger body, the creature, which he had heard Newt call an Erumpent, knocked down the iron gate to the hippo enclosure and made its way inside. Diving behind pillars and brick rubble, Jacob and his new wizarding companion, Newt kept their distance from the Titian as it approached an understandably frightened hippopotamus, confusing the smaller creature for one of her own. Newt, digging in his pockets, produced a rather large vial, the corkscrew lid opening with a slight pop.

"What's that?" Jacob asked in a hoarse whisper, absentmindedly fumbling with the chinstrap of the helmet his companion provided.

"Erumpent musk- she's positively mad for it," Newt explained, dabbing a few drops on the inside of his wrists. "Let's hope it works."

The ginger haired man, with a faint smile on his face, closed the lid and handed the bottle of smelling liquid to Jacob without saying another word, the aspiring baker fumbling with the object in his clammy hands. Incredulous, Jacob watched as Newt walked towards the Erumpent without any sign of fear before he set down his beloved case at his side and opened it slowly.

Without warning, an odd sound split the air like a whip, the No-Maj jumping and causing the vial of Erumpent musk to slip slightly in his short fingers. With wide eyes, Jacob Kowalski could only watch as Newt performed a type of jig that he couldn't quite place and quickly realized that the strange sound brutally assaulting his eardrums was coming from no other than Newts open mouth. He stifled his laughter at the performance, trying to keep the Erumpent's attention on Newt, who seemed to be winning her over with his courtship calls and dancing. With a crooked smile, Jacob looked down at the black bottle and wondered what the Erumpent musk smelled like if it was able to attract a creature such as that. Uncorking the vial, the dark haired man sniffed the edge of the bottle, then pinched his nose and turned away.

Disgusting! He thought as his eyes watered at the smell, How can anything be attracted to that?

At that moment, something fast and hard smacked Jacob on the back of his head. With a cry of surprise, his hands flew up to fend off the next attack and in the process the bottle of musk slipped out of Jacob's hand and landed on the ground, shattering on contact with the icy cement. He turned to glare at the culprit: a seal who had just escaped his enclosure with the Erumpents rampage through the zoo. At Jacob's side lay the seals weapon of choice: a stinking rotten fish, its dead glassy eyes staring blankly into New Yorks cloudy sky. Barking, the seal quickly scampered away, disrupting a pile of broken bricks in his mad dash for safety. 

Still confused as to what had occurred, Jacob turned back to Newt, only to find that the Erumpent was now looking intently at him from across the opening, mist sprouting from flared nostrils. With a small squeal of unbridled fear, Jacob turned and ran from the spot, the heavy tread of the Erumpent following in close pursuit.

Still screaming, the No-Maj baker dashed through the demolished buildings, the following Erumpent disrupting the rubble with her over-sized horn even more. He ran through the fallen arch of what used to be the entrance and out into the falling snow, the white power sinking in up to his knees. He stumbled along, waiting for the creature to catch him from behind until his foot caught on a root and he tripped unceremoniously face-first into the snow. With a grunt, he rolled over in time to see the Erumpent bearing down on him, huge feet throwing up fistfuls of fresh snow. Jacob threw his hands over his head in a final act of self-defense, knowing that he was about to become the world's largest Jacob-shaped pancake in a single step.

However, to his surprise, Jacob Kowalski felt nothing. After a moment of letting the snow seep through his thin suit, he quickly realized that he wasn't dead and shakily lowered his hands.