[Mission: Restrain the Love Lizard] Love at First Sight

The entire park had been cordoned off, but the Guardians only escorted the group of students to the end of the small parking lot, where the asphalt ended and the manicured lawn began. After that, they were set off on their own, following winding footpaths flanked by thin poplars, through tunnels of craning maple crowns, showering carpets of red leaves down across the walkways. Through gaps in the boughs, soft pink and gold clouds stretched across a bruised twilit sky, long and thin as claws, and soon the brighter hues began to drain from from the firmament, speckles of stars fading into life through pinpoints in the clouds.

All around them, nocturnal life was stirring. Croaking frogs and toads, a chorus of cricket-song, the hoot of a distant owl. Twenty years ago, this was a dark old-growth wood, coyotes and mountain lions lurking among the towering swamp ash and skeletal quaking aspen. The earth had been leveled since then, thick chokecherry and hazel and dogwood cleared out for cherry trees and park benches. All the lions and wolves and foxes had been flushed out to make room for the melusine.

This was a clean and quiet park on a ritzy side of town, with no playground to attract screaming children, which made it an ideal place to pop the question. When the sun deigned to shine in Rivers Pointe, the gardens bloomed with strolling couples and kids out on first or second dates. And just a short stop from Anima Zoo and Aquarium. It was only natural that their target would end up here, but the question of how it broke out in the first place still had them scrambling.

They had kept the thing locked up over nineteen years with only four or five incidents, and never an escape attempt. The enclosure was secured for worst monsters, sixteen feet wide and eight feet high, rooted in reinforced concrete and viewed from behind bulletproof glass, with no mention for the on-site security. Escape had never even been considered a possibility until the early hours of that morning, when the senior guard arriving for the shift change found the entire staff incapacitated by the creature (the details of which are best left unspoken).

But the enclosure had been opened from the outside, by a human. There were no traces of anything unnatural, just a lock frozen with aerosol refrigerant and shattered with an electric drill. The intruder came in through the staff entrance, propped three doors open, rang the dinner bell, and left. The melusine was free to just wander out through the staff-only building and into the main park, where Guardians and zoo staff found chinks up the high concrete walls, marks of long claws that allowed her to clear the barrier and escape. An exhaustive day long search of Sofia District led the Guardians to the next sighting, here at Vestal Gardens.

So far, nobody sees anything.

The monster was supposedly dangerous, but not at all life-threatening, which was the only reason she volunteered to take it upon herself to ensure it's recapture... Well, that and Joanna had to make sure that someone wasn't going to get shot or stabbed or pulverized, not on her watch. Her eyes flickered over to Shepard and the other two with them, one a fellow prefect and another a young girl, someone who seemed to be a bit in over her head.

Well, she didn't know what the others deals were, but Shepard was pretty okay in a fight and there were Guardians standing all around, keeping watch to make sure the creature didn't escape or things wouldn't get out of hand... Nothing to worry about. "If we're lucky, this thing will just jump out and we can get this over with." she murmured.

Shepard stood near Joanna, eyes narrowed considerably as they arrived. "Knowing my luck, that isn't going to be the case." The blond bumped her shoulder, then looking in the other direction as if he wasn't the one to do it. Instead, he watched the others arrive, giving them grins and waving at their arrival.

The youngest came forward with a bit of trepidation. She hadn't exactly told her father she'd be on a mission like this. Brianne again found herself on the company of Shepard, somehow. She hadn't intended on seeing this reckless dude so much, hadn't he already put himself in the line of fire once before not too long ago? Literally? Well, she had too, but whatever. "Where do you think it's hiding? Though this was potentially dangerous, excitement still bubbled up in her chest. Her family's gifts had strange applications and she wanted to know exactly what she could do if given the opportunity. She wanted to do more than turn her fingers into some horribly long noodles.

Seth strolled up to the other students. A grin on his face, for the mission was beginning and killing was in the question. Seth's head twitched and the grin dissipated, his eyes losing the glazed look as he came to a stop by a girls side. The blond nodded his head at Shepherd, who he knew as a fellow prefect. "Hmm.. that's a good question. If I was a giant lizard where would I hide?"

If the giant lizard was there, it gave no answer. Not at first. The leaves stirred overhead, branches rustling against each other in the breeze. As the sun began to set, shadows lengthened down the park lane, and the gloom deepened.

Then, the creaking of wood, the trampling of undergrowth, and ahead, a cluster of shaking brambles. A small shape burst from the vegetation, a dark blur as it scampered past the students, another form following close at its heels. Two coyotes, tongues lolling from their mouths, paying no attention to the group of students walking down the garden path, darting between the children's legs. And the brambles still shook, with something much larger following...