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Prompt 5: Though Destiny City is a busy metropolis, dense forests encircle the city. It's uncommon for wildlife to wander into the city--especially larger creatures--but something is making its mark on Destiny City. Large footprints, humanlike but far too large to belong to any ordinary human, are appearing around Destiny City. They always lead to the woods, and back again--and the strange part is that no one seems to be able to see what has caused them. Cameras distort, and anyone who thinks they've come into contact with the creature can only make out a thick, white fur and something easily nine feet tall. Oddly enough, any surface near the tracks are covered in a sheet of ice, as though whatever passed close to them was so cold it left a frosty trail.
Lepus was a big fan of anything involving horror and the occult, but what she also really enjoyed was hunting cryptids. Of course, she had yet to actually really catch one in action, at least not long enough to have any sort of recorded 'proof' to show her haters that doubted her, but Lepus still liked reading up on all the rumors and creepypasta she found online and trying to follow up on them. The sea monster from this past summer had ultimately gotten away, making Lepus one very disappointed teen, but she wouldn't give up so easily, that was for certain!
Like clockwork, rumors started circulating again about another strange sighting around town, something about some sort of woodland creature that was humungous in size, that left a trail of ice in its wake. Apparently, like before, nobody seemed to be able to catch it on camera clearly enough to identify it, so all the rumors could say were that it was big, covered in white fur, and that it kept going back and forth between the woods and the town. Easy enough, right? It might not have been much to go off of for an ordinary person, but Lepus was certain that if anyone could catch a sighting of this icy cryptid, it'd be none other than herself!
This time, Lepus went solo; although she had previously taken both Etoile and Rune with her, she pondered if leaving the kittens behind was a better strategy, even if their star lasers would have come in handy for stunning the creature. Ah well, there was always next time, though Lepus certainly was banking on achieving encountering the ice-making cryptid the first time around. Thus far, the game plan was to get in, get evidence, and... well, 'get out' was somewhere in there, but then so was 'profit' as well. Profit how, she wasn't sure, but 'being taken seriously and not regarded as being a weirdo' was probably pretty close.
"So, all I need to do is find some giant footprints, right? Easy peasy!" Lepus thought to herself, feeling somewhat particularly smug. This would surely be easier than dealing with the lake creature last summer, she felt, given there was no large bodies of water needing to be crossed, just... the woods. Vaguely, there was a distant thought in the back of her mind, a hazy memory that was probably just a dream, where she could have sworn this wasn't the first time she had dealt with some giant monster that lived in a forest, but she ignored it. This was her chance to shine, not that all those other past attempts hadn't been great for showing off... or just fun experiences overall.
(That haunted carousel from Halloween last year had gained her an 'ally' out of one of her classmates, even if Cinta hadn't turned out to be an unawakened senshi, after all.)
It took ages, or what seemed like ages, before Lepus finally found a set of footprints that matched the descriptions of the creature she had heard about. Disappointingly, there was no furry white giant in sight, but the footprints and the icy trail that followed them were evidence enough that she was on the right track. If the monster was going back and forth between town and the woods, all she had to do was follow the tracks, and she'd find it soon enough, right?
"Alright, let's do this!"
