Welcome to Gaia! ::

Laura went on-call at nine in the morning. She was greeted by a sharp and annoying cell-phone ring. She answered it in Spanish for no real reason. "Yeah?" she greeted.
"Hello, O'Doughertai, this is Manning. There's been an... incident in the city. Can you get that?" Oh, it was just Manning. It was only a really serious call when people came and almost knocked your door down.
"What is it?"
"Triple ABC call."
"ABCs in New Jersey?"
"Yeah, go figure," He said. Laura pictured him shrugging. He gave her a locations the ABCs had been seen at. She wrote them down on a piece of paper and folded it up into her pocket.
The agent got ready for work rapidly. Teeth brushed? Check. Hair? Check. IDs, gun, etc.? Check. She left her room and was about to leave when she remembered Zigfried. She could take him. ABCs were almost never a threat.
She went to his door and knocked. "Izzy, do you want to come on a mission?"

"Cool. Follow me, then." She took him down a hallway to what was practically a hangar for cars.
They were all civillian models on the outside, but most of them had muscle car engines on the inside and extremely tough wheels. She led him to an older model Plymouth Neon. "This one's mine. You get to ride shotgun."
She unlocked it with a key rather than a remote like modern cars and slid in. Laura turned it on and checked everything. Ready to go.
"Okay," she started to explain, "There are three ABCs in the city center. ABC stands for Alien Big Cat. It's sort of a world phenomenon... a leopard appears in London, someone sees a panther over in Maine. Weird stuff. Right now, it's three lionesses in the park.
"You got your deck of cards and sketchbook?" She put it in gear and they zoomed away.

She shook her head no. "For 'enhanced talents' agents like you and me, it's mostly fieldwork, but there are a lot of research and coordination jobs. For the field, it comes down to dealing with all sorts of spooks and critters the world over. Sometimes that means killing them, sometimes it means capturing them, but other times you can just talk to them. Like ghosts. Most ghosts just want someone to acknowledge them so they can move on. I don't really work with ghosts anymore, though. I deal strictly with beasties. You can't shoot a ghost."
She was about to turn a corner when a lion jumped onto the hood. She gunned it, and th beast tumbled away. With a loud "SCREEEE" sound of wheels grinding against the asphalt, she pulled the car to a halt. The hood was dented and there was a small break in the window, but she was okay. Laura reached for the backseat and grabbed some special tranquilizers. They were in bullet shape so she could fire them.
Laura cracked a window and drew her more-than-antique revolver, cocked it, and aimed. She fired, but the round only grazed the lioness's hindquarters.

Laura spun and fired two live bullets into the lioness's head. At that range it was an easy hit. She grabbed it by the neck and yanked it away, but three hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight are hard to move. She left the body to bleed out.
She glanced over at the one in the pyramid. It was pacing and growling, but seemed contained. She didn't know how long it could last. She remembered the fleeting lifespan of the small bird Zigfreid had drawn the previous night.
Laura spun to look in all directions. She saw no third lioness. Although this was good news in the simple sense, it was bad news to people who knew that lions traveled in packs and were near invisible when they were hunting.
She had given up using non-lethal force when he second lioness had debuted, and Laura had no fears about killing another one. She reloaded her gun even though she hadn't fired all six rounds.
"Izzy, are you okay?" she said, finally, still turning round and round. If he was concussed, it would be a lot more work than if he was just scratched.

"That's my question, too," Laura said. Then, "Get your back against something solid no nothing can sneak up on you. I'm going to listen for it."
She liquefied and was motionless. The vibrations in theair around her game Laura a sketchy sort of idea of her surroundings. Hell, she could even "hear" Izzy's heartbeats. Of course it wasn't hearing, it wall all sense of touch because she could feel the air move.
She felt the one lioness pacing. The padded feat muffled the impacts well. She blocked that out.
And then there was a shifting sound. It was behind the car, but far back and... behind something else. She got up as a human and looked in the direction of the shifting. "She's over there, behind the cement barricade."

Laura raised her gun. I do not aim with my hands... she quoted to herself, and fired a round into the mist. She heard it embed itself into the cement. She cocked the revolver again. I aim with my eyes.
She waited for what felt like hours. The moment she saw movement she fired. It was a messy hit that went through the lion's right bicep and made her stumble. She lay down with a meowling noise and started to lick the wound. Laura reloaded quickly and with practiced deftness.
As if on cue, a "garbage" truck rolled up. Someone bailed out and looked at Laura questioningly.
"One contained, one dead, one potentially crippled."
"Well get them to zoos," the driver promised.
Laura nodded. She turned to Izzy. "That was worse than I had expected. I wouldn't have taken you if I thought they were going to be preying on us. All the ABCs I've ever dealt with were frightened. Skittish, but I've never had a violent one before."
She sat down.

Laura chuckled a bit. Then she asked him, "By the way, what was that little paper guy called? That was a cool trick. Haven't seen anything like that since I was in Japan. There was this electric weasel making ball lightning and some of the local agents had to help me out.
"But whatever. You're not too beat up, I hope."

"My firing arm's a little sore, but that's what I get for shooting a ton of rounds from a world-war-one colt .45 revolver," she admitted. "It's got a nasty kick to it. Speaking of which..."
Laura pulled the gun out and unloaded it before she put it back in its holster inside her coat.
"So you've been to Japan, too? Is there anywhere you haven't been?"