BEGINNINGS

14 - A Show of Force

Several days later...

Muldoon bust in through the hybrid's room and hollered, "Come on, Pet! Get up!" and turned on the overhead bedroom light.

The girl jerked awake at hissed at the bright light flooding her room. "Ah, the light! It burns, it burns!" Pet tried her best to cover her head with the covers.

"Get your ass out of bed, Pet." Muldoon went to teen's closet and pulled out a shirt and pair of shorts. "This is your first and last warning."

The hybrid mumbled. "Or else?"

"Remember the last time we had this discussion?" Pet peered an eye from under the covers to see his Springfield .30-06 rifle slung over his shoulder. This brought a bit of curiosity to the hybrid.

"You never have your rifle on you when you give me a wake-up call. What's going on?" Pet checked the time on her clock by her bed. "Two-thirty AM? Robert, what the hell is going on?"

"Stop asking questions and GET OUT OF BED! We don't have time."

Pet gave a bashful look at her close friend. "I will when you get out of my room and give me some privacy."

"Hurry your ass up, " and he slammed the door behind him.

She knew something wasn't right and hastily changed out of her pajamas and into her traditional white shirt and tan shorts. She didn't even bother to put her shoes while running out of her room after getting dressed. Parked in front of the dorms was Muldoon in the game warden Jeep and jumped up.

"Mind filling me in on what's going on?"

Muldoon tossed the Jeep in gear and hastily left the pebble riddled parking lot. "A leopard escaped its enclosure about thirty minutes ago and was seen running west, south-west. If we hurry, we can catch up to her." Pet reached into the back seat where her rifle was and smiled seeing it already loaded and ready. "We're not going to shoot her, just so you know." Raptor eyes rolled over to focus on the frantic Jeep's driver. "We're going to tranquilizer her."

"Why have a loaded rifle with bullets then?"

"I like to be prepared for worst-case scenarios." Pet sighed and set the gun down.

Once the two were clear of the zoo and on the outskirts of a nearby overgrowth, Muldoon paused the Jeep to look at Pet. She was standing up in the passenger seat and holding onto the windshield with one hand, her rifle in another. "Do you see anything? Smell anything?" He studied the hybrid's raptor-like eyes. They were scanning the darkness around them and her sniffing the air. "Pet?"

"I can't smell anything but the exhaust. Turn off the Jeep." She handed the man her gun and reached under the passenger seat to reveal a flare gun. "When I find her, come to the flare. I can't hunt from smelling the damn Jeep."

"Be careful."

Pet climbed out of the vehicle and took off into a light run into the night fallen savannah. A few moments later, the hybrid had disappeared in the overgrowth.

Once she was away from the smells of the Jeep, Pet lowered her body closer to the ground and tried to get a scent of the escaped leopard. She looked to the stars in the skies and saw a star to use as a reference to the South, South-west direction and proceeded that way. What felt like forty-five minutes later, Pet heard a rustle in some nearby shrubbery and fell silent. She sniffed the air and caught a scent of something as it moved again in the dark. Pet wanted to make sure it was the leopard before shooting off the flare and tried to focus in on it. The hybrid slowly moved in closer as a leopard with a zoo's identification collar darted out from under the bushes. Pet shot off the flare gun and took off after the large cat now that it was more visible once out in the open.

A quarter of a mile away, Muldoon saw the flare shoot off into the air and cranked the Jeep up, tearing off in that direction. He flipped on the main spotlights mounted on top of the vehicle to better see Pet or the leopard.

Meanwhile, the hybrid continued to follow the leopard and hoped that she would be able to tire it out so tackling it when Muldoon arrived wouldn't be too much trouble. She loaded up the flare gun once more and launched off another flare. "Damn it, Robert, where the hell are you?"

Muldoon saw the second flare shoot up into the early morning sky from his right and quickly changed direction to follow it. "I'm coming Pet."

The leopard quickly changed direction, and Pet did too to follow the cat. "Like hell, you're getting away again." The hybrid let out a high pitched shrill as she picked up her pace in speed. "No more playtime. Here kitty, kitty."

When she was a few feet shy of the leopard, Pet sprung into the air and extended her feet and signature sickle claws in front of her as she tackled the large cat. Inertia caused the two to tumble forward as the leopard swung a clawed forepaw at Pet, its claws grazing her arm. "Bad kitty!

Pet returned the gesture by striking the leopard with her clawed hand across the cat's face, which the leopard reacted to. It reared up on its hind legs and wrapped Pet up in a deadly embrace and biting her on her right shoulder. The hybrid let out a screaming cry of pain as her body went stiff from the pain tearing through every part of her body.

Muldoon heard the piercing sound of a high-pitched scream and knew all too well what the sound meant. "Stay with me Pet. I'm coming."

Before, Pet was trying to keep the injuries to the fierce cat a minimum, but now she didn't care. The raptor in her kicked in and on instinct dug her sickle claws into the hips of the feral cat and a clawed hand to its throat. A roar of pain filled the hybrid's ears, and she shrilled in return, lips curled back to reveal her partially carnivorous teeth. She then clawed at the cat's face once more, causing the leopard to swat at her with its own powerful, clawed paw. The hybrid quickly acted and used her free hand to grab the cat's right foreleg as she dug her claws into the tender flesh of the leopard. In a blink of an eye, she saw her opportunity and took it to bite at the throat of the beast in an attempt to incapacitate it.

Muldoon could hear the growls of an apparent fight between a large cat and what he knew was Pet and sped up. He followed the sounds and just as he topped a hill, saw the two in the distance with his counterpart trapped beneath the cat. He grabbed his tranquilizing gun he next to him and stood up to use the top of the windshield as a hand rest to steady his aim.

The game warden flipped the safety device off the gun and looked down the barrel to where the sites were. "Not my Pet you don't!"

The hybrid could see the headlights of a vehicle nearby and knew it was Muldoon, her thankful he finally decided to show up. Pet released her bite just in time to see the cat's other paw about to make another vicious swipe at her and she grabbed it, holding the leopard in place above her long enough for Muldoon to take his shot. Muldoon pulled the trigger of the tranquilizer gun as the dart shot at the half reared up leopard, positioned entirely above the hybrid, in the shoulder.

He jumped out of the Jeep and grabbed his animal restraint pole, running toward the leopard. "Pet, watch the head!" The hybrid met the leopard's fierce gaze as a flash of white fangs, and golden fur was pulled off of her forcefully.

The leopard started to put up a fight against the restraining pole only to be partially choked from Muldoon pulling harder on the cord. "Pet get off your ass and get the other pole!" The hybrid fought her own body's protesting to sit up and stared at the frantic sight before her.

She tried to stand up but only fell back onto the grassy earth as she cried in pain from her injuries. Muldoon saw the bloodied girl fight to get up just to fail. Heart wrenching fear gripped his gut at the thought of losing her. "Pet stop laying around!" Meanwhile, the leopard started to succumb to the tranquilizer as she lowered her body onto the ground. "That's it, girl…lay down."

Pet forcefully hoisted herself up with her left arm as she kept her right arm tucked away close to her body. "Sounds like a plan to me." The teen finally gave up fighting the urge to get up and laid down, feeling her entire body ache.