03 FEBRUARY
10:51PM

 Julia stirred as she realized someone was standing over her. She must've
fallen asleep on the couch, she realized, waiting for Theo to come home from
his latest trip.
 And there he was, standing there in the darkened living room. She could tell
it was him from the silhouette, although it was slightly distorted--as if he
was carrying something in his arms.
 Julia sat up and smiled. "Hi," she said. "I must've dozed--"
 "Ssh," Theo quietly said.
 Julia was puzzled. "What?" she whispered, turning on the lamp.
 There Theo stood, as she'd expected, holding something, as she'd expected; but
what he was holding, she never would've guessed in a billion years.
 "Where did she come from?" Julia asked in a whisper, standing up.
 Theo looked down at the year-old child asleep in his arms, then looked back up
at Julia. "It's a long story," he said, staying quiet. "You should sit down."

Jason Low
presents
a Project HEARD fanfic

GD-21 (Gold Digger Minus 21): Cheetah's Story

 Julia stared some more at her husband and his fragile cargo.
 "I have to start with the beginning," Theo said to her. "It's going to be a
sort-of-a drawn-out story, so please bear with me."
 She sat down, nodding, and watched as he sat in his easy chair, continuing to
hold the sleeping infant. "The beginning would be the best place to start, I
think," Julia told him.
 "All right," he said. "It was all brought on by the mission that I was sent on
last week."

31 JANUARY
06:05PM

 "You have a job for me?"
 Agent M looked up and nodded as Theodore Diggers stepped into his office.
"Have a seat," he said with a gesture.
 Theo sat down, and M picked up a folder, opening it and regarding the file
within before speaking again. "In the past six days, nine people--all without
ties to one another--have been found dead in a rural area of Scotland."
 Theo shifted slightly in his seat, despite the fact he'd just sat down. "I
take it, since you've asked for me, this isn't your standard, run-of-the-mill
serial killer?"
 M shook his head and leaned forward. "Are they ever?"
 Theo took the folder, which M had turned around and held out for him. He saw
some pretty disgusting things there, the details of which we won't go into
since this IS supposed to be a fanfic in the tradition of Minus-18. Suffice it
to say he winced at most of the images before him. "They look like they've been
clawed to shreds," he observed. "What on Earth did this? ..Let me guess, that's
the question I'm to answer, right?"
 "I know it looks like an animal attack," M said, "but there's evidence to
contradict that."
 Theo looked over the top of the report at M. "How do you mean?"
 "Well, there seems to be some purpose to some of the cuts and slashes."
 "Purpose? As in.."
 "As in they were made with the foreknowledge of what they would do to human
anatomy. Not an instinctive attack that one would attribute to an animal--this
was designed to kill these people quickly."
 "Are you saying you believe this to be an attack by sentients?"
 M nodded, regarding Theo.
 Dr. Diggers tried not to pause too long. "Any ideas?"
 M studied his desk for a moment, then looked up. "What's your opinion on the
existence of were-wolves?"
 "Here? On Earth?" Theo countered. He sat up and put the folder on M's desk.
"No. I've seen them on Jade, but not here."
 "Well, now we think you've seen them--or at least evidence of them--here," M
said, gesturing to the folder.
 "But were-creatures don't attack humans," Theo pointed out, "unless they're
provoked. These were civilian deaths, were they not?"
 "That's correct. And that's the big question. There's got to be something
going on that's causing these tourists and thrill-seekers to get attacked. It's
up to you to find out what it is."

01 FEBRUARY
4:15PM LOCAL TIME

 Theo entered the country via normal channels, flying in and then driving to
the town nearest the crime scene. As usual, the existence of the Paranormal
Investigations Unit was kept secret, and to aid in that, Theo refrained from
using his magic while in the company of others.
 The chief constable did want to know why the FBI was interested in a murder
investigation in Scotland, though. Theo had an answer for that, and a truthful
one, too: the PIU had offered a helping hand--a favor, of sorts--to the UK
government, though not explaining how they knew of the case.
 In any case, Dr. Diggers went as directly to the crime scene as he could,
after dealing with the inquirious chief constable, who was kind enough to point
him in the proper direction of the site of the killings.
 It was grisly, even without the bodies, which had no doubt been carted off
already for investigation and delivery to their families. Signs of a great
battle were all over the woods; blood and gore littered the area, and the
remains of trees and bushes were scattered about, shattered into dozens of
pieces.
 There remained plenty of evidence for Theo to inspect. Shreds of clothing were
here and there, and not all of it looked like it had come from a professional
tailor. <Well, NONE of it does, anymore,> Theo amended in his mind, looking at
the tattered remains.
 While he evaluated the bits and pieces left for him, he thought of the were-
creatures familiar to him from his days in Jade. Of all of them, he couldn't
come up with one that he could believe would be involved in what had transpired
in the Scottish forest.
 <I can't imagine it happening,> he told himself, <but people change over
time.> He picked up a piece of cloth with claw marks ripped through it, holding
it up to look through the rents. <I wonder if any of them have made the trip to
Earth, and if so, why?>
 <And why would they do a thing like this, in any case?>

 "I encountered some rather interesting things," Theo went on, telling Julia
the story. "A tree nearby had deep claw marks in its bark. As well, there
appeared to be several gouges in the tree, as in bullet holes."
 "They were at the same height as the claw marks," he added. "They were all
bloody, of course, but more importantly, one of them had some fur lodged inside
the tree's wound. And, to my surprise, as I stood there beside the tree to
measure, the wound was just above the height of my shoulder blade!"
 "It was getting late, and there didn't seem to be much more to learn from that
little patch of wilderness, so I retired to the nearby village's inn for the
night. There I found no help; upon bringing up the topic, I was greeted at
first with wild rumors and speculation, and next with dire warnings not to
venture again into the forest, if I valued my life."
 He carried on: "The next morning, bright and early, and despite the warnings,
I returned to the scene of the killings, to try again. I spent the morning
roaming the forest, finding no creatures alive or dead, but a great deal of
damage similar to what I'd seen the day before. Some areas were the
crime-scenes of previous deaths, but other places in the forest were heavily
disturbed as well, areas nowhere near any of the reported civilian deaths."
 "Around noon, I was preparing to return to town for a break, when I came
across something of a shock--a dead cheetah, lying not very far from the first
crime-scene I'd visited the day previous. A cheetah, Julia, I swear to you.
Naturally, this got my attention--what was a cheetah doing in Scotland, and how
had it died? Well, actually, the last part was plainly obvious, as I checked
the body over, finding hundreds of deep wounds all over it. Like the civilians,
this cat had been clawed to death."
 "But that wasn't all," Theo continued, "not even the half of it. As I
inspected the body, I found some injuries to its forward right shoulder which I
recognized. Had the creature been standing up on its hind legs, Julia, the
gouges on its shoulder would have all but perfectly matched the same pattern as
I saw on the tree the previous day."
 "The one with the bullets lodged in it?" Julia asked, finally getting a word
in.
 "The very same," Theo nodded. "Though I didn't get a chance to check for
gunshot wounds to the cheetah, for just then, the skies chose to open up and
drench me. Granted, I could've cast a 'repel-rain' spell to protect myself, but
it was pointless, as the rain was driving with enough force to disturb the
evidence anyway--the cheetah was soaked through in a matter of moments, and
what blood wasn't still matted in its fur was getting washed away into the
muddy soil."
 "So I returned to town and waited," he told her. "I waited over twenty- four
hours; it stopped raining early this morning, but I was hoping that the fog and
dreariness would burn off sooner rather than later. In any case, it didn't, so
in the early afternoon, I went back and found the cheetah was gone. It didn't
get up and leave on its own, that's for certain, but there were multiple sets
of footprints--vaguely humanoid in nature--leaving the area. I chose to follow
them, and found myself approaching what sounded like a great battle."
 "Before I could arrive there and see it for myself, a startling creature was
suddenly before me. Julia, it was a were-cheetah. I could tell it was a
lycanthrope, because of its constantly shifting aura.. an aura that showed me
that the creature was basically good, but meant business."
 "That hunch was proven right straight away when we spoke. The were-creature
told me to leave or be destroyed. I, in hopes of finding out more about him and
what he was doing in the forest, declined, and he attacked me on the spot as
promised!"
 "It was a quick and even fight," he said as Julia gasped. "He was my physical
superior, yes, standing at least a head taller than me and possessing strength
beyond belief, but I don't think he was counting on dealing with an arch-mage.
Still, before I could put up any sort of protection, he'd opened up a
devastating wound right here." Theo, still holding the child, gestured to the
left side of his abdomen/rib cage with his elbow. "Not to mention other
injuries, though the main one would've killed a normal man. In any case, I
fought to defend myself, but it wasn't slowing him down. So I had to resort to
going on the offensive--attacking the were-creature with whatever I could come
up with. Fireballs seemed to stun him, and when he was ready to go down, I came
forward and readied a spell that would incapacitate him for a period of time.
But before I could use it, he lunged up and attacked me again--I'd had to drop
my defenses to prepare the final spell--and worked at my gut wound. He told me
that this wasn't the concern of humans, and that I would serve as a lesson."
 "He HAD me, Julia," Theo said after a moment. "I've never before felt so
certain I would die. By all rights, he should've finished me off. But he
didn't; instead, he sprung up to his feet and turned away, as if he'd heard or
sensed something. In a flash, he was gone, leaving me to tend to my wounds."
 "After healing myself, I was able to pick up his track, and follow it to a
village of sorts. Many of the trees in the area had had their trunks hollowed
out. They looked to be fresh.. as were the kills nearby."
 "They were were-cheetahs, Julia. As plain as day, there was an entire clan of
were-cheetahs living in that forest. 'Was' being the operative word, for
something, or someone, had slaughtered them all."
 "In fact, as I entered the village, I sensed another were-creature still
alive, watching me from afar. I didn't confront him, though, for fears that our
meeting might turn out to be like the last encounter. (In retrospect, whatever
I sensed was probably the being that did the killing.)"
 "I found the one I had been fighting before.. he was dead, like all the rest.
Something had dealt him many mortal blows. Now, as we both know, were-folk can
only be harmed by silver, magic, or other were-folk. I didn't see any silver
there, and he hadn't been wounded THAT badly by our duel, so it's obvious that
the other were-creature that I sensed was probably responsible."
 "In any case, the one I'd fought was lying just outside a tree-hut, in which I
could see another body--someone I presume was his mate. And inside, in a
makeshift crib, was this child." He looked down at the infant in his arms.
 "I feel responsible, in a way," Theo sighed to Julia. "Had I not done battle
with the were-cheetah, perhaps he would've been strong enough to defend his
family. As I look back on it now, I suppose it was only pure luck that I
happened into the village when I did, or else the other were-creature would've
certainly finished this child off as well."
 "So I buried the dead, then stood guard over the child, ensuring no one else
returned to finish the job. When I was strong enough to create a dimension-
door, I--WE--returned home."
 "She's the last of the were-cheetahs, Julia," he said after a long pause,
looking back up at his wife finally. "At least, the last of that clan, and
since I've never heard of any other were-cheetah clans.."
 "So what should we do?" Julia asked.
 "She should be with her own kind, I think," Theo said.
 "But you just said you think her own kind has been wiped out, right?"
 "It would appear that way, yes; but I haven't checked EVERYWHERE yet.. It's a
big world, there might be more somewhere else." He looked at the child again,
then back at Julia. "And until then, I feel it's my duty to protect her from
harm, in case she IS the last of her kind."
 "Okay," Julia nodded. "But what about right now - tonight, I mean?"
 Theo stood up. "Well, I guess I'll have to go get Gina's old crib out"--he
delivered the child to a surprised Julia--"and see if I can't get it set up."
 "You okay?" he asked after a moment, seeing Julia's expression, which was one
of confusion.
 "Uh-huh," she said, trying to get used to caring for an infant again.
 "Okay," Theo said, turning away. "I'll be right back."

 Julia sat there for a moment, rocking her arms back and forth and singing in a
quiet voice, when suddenly the bundle in her arms stirred and opened its eyes.
 "Easy.. easy," she whispered to the infant, which was about to cry.
 Julia smiled as she was able to soothe the baby. "That's a girl.. just rest
now.."
 She continued to rock the baby; its eyes and hers were locked on one another.
Finally, Julia carefully stood up and said, "I suppose we should try to find
you a bottle and some milk, huh?"

 Down in the basement, Theo was rooting around for the box with Gina's crib in
it. While he was searching, he was also thinking.
 <What does this mean for us?> he asked himself. <Not just 'us' as in Julia and
me, but as in the world?>
 <Do I have a right to reveal to the world the existence of were-creatures
among us?>
 <And besides that, how would this child grow up in the human world? How would
she possibly fit in?>
 <Well,> he thought a moment later, after mulling it over (and finding the
crib, in the meantime), <it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but I suppose I
could remove her ability to inflict lycanthropy on humans.. at least, then, she
wouldn't pose a danger to others, although her unique 'abilities' would
certainly be cause for discussion.>
 He managed to haul the box with the crib in it upstairs, to his and Julia's
room; there, he extracted the parts from the box and pieced them all together,
happily coming out the other end with a fully-intact crib.
 <That might work,> he told himself, looking at the assembled infant bed but
still thinking of the concept of bringing up the were-child.

 "Julia," Theo said quietly, coming back into the room, "it's all set up now;
it just needs some bedding--"
 He stopped short as he saw his wife sitting on the couch, under the lamp; she
was still holding the baby, but the baby was awake, wide eyes regarding Julia
as she helped the child feed vigorously from a bottle.
 Julia looked up and smiled. "I think she likes me," she said to Theo.

THREE DAYS LATER

 Theo sighed as he sat at his desk in his and Julia's bedroom. He'd asked his
colleagues in the PIU, and they had nothing to offer. Then again, he hadn't
given them the whole truth, either; he kept from them the reason he was asking
if they'd heard of other tribes of were-creatures in the world. What he'd done
might very likely be considered getting too close to a case, or at the very
least, quite literally bringing his work home with him.
 "So what now?" he whispered to himself, sitting there and wondering what to
do. It looked like a search was in order, but where to start, and how to go
about it?
 His eyes roamed the room and landed on his globe.
 <Of course,> he realized. It only made sense. Well, based upon everything else
he'd encountered, nothing made sense any more, but at least it was a worthwhile
starting point.
 He turned the globe around so he could regard Africa.

 It took a day to get settled so that they could leave--Julia insisted on
coming along, and that meant bringing the kids--Gina and the were-baby--as
well, and THAT meant preparation was necessary.
 For a week, Theo searched the continent's prime places to find the cheetah;
Julia helped, but she also returned home every now and then (via a dimension-
door courtesy of Theo) to let the kids rest and for feedings and such.
 Finally, after the week-long tour, Theo could sense what he was looking for.
The were-cheetah his wife held in her arms was very easy for him to magically
detect, due to her lycanthropic properties. It was that that Theo had been
searching for--remnants of the same--and it was that that he detected at long
last in a desolate region of Tanzania.
 "It looks so.. so.." Julia said, as they stepped out of the dimension-door and
took in the view.
 Theo nodded grimly. "No wonder they ended up someplace else."
 They were looking at a village on the plains of the Serengeti, but it wasn't
much to look at. If one could imagine the concept of a ghost town in the
desert, the place the Diggerses were presently at would be it. It was as if the
small concentration of huts, and its surroundings, experienced a phenomenal
drought; the land was parched, and the trees that had once surrounded the
village were either dead or dying; some had even toppled over.
 There wasn't another living thing for miles.
 "This must have been devastating," Julia said, coming up beside Theo as he
took in the sights.
 "Indeed," he said, nodding once more. "They must have left here looking for a
new home, and stumbled across another were-creatures' lair in Scot--"
 "Theo? What's wrong?" Julia said after he stopped talking, seemingly
concentrating on something extrasensory.
 "Perhaps I was wrong," Theo said. "I'm able to detect some magical residue
here. This"--he gestured to the ruined plains--"was not a natural event."
 "Someone DID THIS? Why??" Julia wondered aloud.
 "Perhaps the were-cheetahs had enemies," Theo mused. "And they somehow
convinced someone to help them drive the cheetahs off this land, by causing it
to go pot, as the saying goes. Perhaps they were even lying in wait when the
cheetahs decided to migrate to Scotland."
 "So where to now?" Julia said.
 "I'm not sure," Theo said. "Let me think about it for a moment."
 "Okay," Julia nodded. She took Gina and the baby over to a hillside nearby.

 Theo sat down and thought about the situation. He was trying to find were-
cheetahs, in order to deliver this infant to them, so that they could raise her
as she was meant to be raised.
 He didn't know where any other were-cheetahs were, despite having searched one
entire continent already. And he didn't want to have to scour the globe, for
that would take far too long--perhaps even years.
 <It would stand to reason that, if they travelled from here to Scotland, that
perhaps some of them might have stayed behind, to try to find other resources
here,> he mused. <Perhaps I can find them if they ARE here.>
 He looked up to see Julia sitting cross-legged on the nearby rise, the baby in
her lap. Gina was running in circles around the two of them, laughing and
yelling, and from the sounds of things, and the smile on Julia's face, the baby
was having a happy time of it too.
 <Julia certainly has gotten back into the spirit of motherhood easily,> Theo
observed. <She'd like to think that it's not something she's cut out for, but
she's only kidding herself, and probably not that well, either.>
 Gina had stopped running now and was standing before her mother, plunging her
stuffed-rabbit toy into and out of Julia's lap, no doubt making the toy pretend
to jump and land on the baby over and over. Everyone continued laughing, and
the infant was the loudest of them all.
 <Gina's reaction impresses me, too,> he said, turning away to look at the
ghost-town that had been the were-cheetahs' home. <I'd been afraid she'd be
offended at the thought of us bringing another child into the house, like all
the stories you hear of sibling envy. But she's welcomed the child with open
arms, with no agression whatsoever.>
 He realized he was thinking of the baby as his own child, and mentally blinked
at the lapse. He steered his thoughts back to the issue at hand. <So the best
course of action is to search for any remaining were-cheetahs that didn't go to
Scotland from here,> he decided.
 "You okay in there?" Julia said, standing over Theo with a smile.
 "Hm? Oh, yes," he said, returning to reality from his distractedness. No
matter how hard he tried focusing on finding the were-cheetahs, the only image
he could picture in his mind was that of Julia and Gina and the baby. "It
occurs to me that perhaps not all of the were-cheetahs left."
 "How do you mean?"
 "It only makes sense that they might leave some behind," he said. "This place
certainly dried up, but there are other places that smaller groups of were-
cheetahs might have been able to live by. I'm going to look about and see if I
can't find any evidence of them."
 "Okay," Julia nodded. "Lead on."
 He did; they walked around for a while, searching the region with Theo's
magic. Banking on the assumption the were-cheetahs wouldn't have gone far, they
didn't spend all that much time searching.
 "Nothing, huh?" Julia said knowingly, seeing Theo's expression as he turned
back around.
 "Not a thing," he acknowledged. "I would like to try one more place, though."
 "All right," she said. "C'mon, Gina, we're going.."

 Julia stepped out of the dimension-door behind Theo into a forest.
 "Is this..?" she asked.
 "Yes," Theo said.
 Julia reached out for Gina and turned her inwards towards, shielding her eyes
from the gruesome scenes before them. "You could've let me know, you know."
 Theo turned and realized what she meant; he apologized, even as he saw that
Julia was protecting not only her daughter but the infant from the scene. "Let
me just cast about here for a few moments and then we'll call it a day."
 "Very well," Julia said. "Good thing, too; the little one's getting restless."
 "Right," Theo nodded, thinking more and more about Julia's handling of the
child. He put that out of his mind for the moment and started his search.

 A few moments' work stretched into a few hours', and finally, at dusk, he
decided to head home. He'd found nothing of note, except a faint sensation from
the direction of the coast, as if there was something nearby to the west that
was lycanthropic in nature. However, it didn't have the same feeling as the
were-cheetahs did, so Theo chose not to follow it up. <It's very likely the
ones responsible for this poor child's clan's slaughter,> he decided. <I
wouldn't want to turn her over to them.>
 Actually, he didn't want to turn her over to anyone, now that he realized it.
Besides the fact that Julia and Gina were getting along so well with her, he
felt that she was still his responsibility, for his part in making her father
too weak to defend his family.

 Later that night, Gina snuck out of her bedroom to use the bathroom, and heard
her parents out in the kitchen.
 "So we agree, it'd be best for her--for all involved?" her dad was saying.
 "Uh-huh," came her mom's voice.
 "Gina's going to have to be told that she has a sister now."
 "I'll do that tomorrow. I imagine you're going to want to get some outside
help to get her legally adopted, right?"
 "Yes, I'll take care of that in the morning as well," Gina's dad said.

 Gina tiptoed quietly past her own bedroom and snuck into her parents' room to
look at the baby sleeping in the crib.
 "Sister?" she said quietly.

THE NEXT EVENING

 "It's almost all settled," Theo said as he hung up his coat. "M will make
arrangements through his contacts to let us adopt."
 "How'd he react when you told him what she is?" Julia asked.
 Theo smiled. "He wasn't surprised--said he'd figured something was up from the
nature of my enquiries."
 "By the way--you said it's 'almost' done? What's left?"
 "Well, M wanted her official name for the adoption papers.. and I know we
talked about this already, but I didn't want to finalize anything without
talking to you."
 Julia paused for a few moments. "All right, then.. did you still like
'Britanny'?"
 Theo smiled again, putting an arm around Julia. "It's a fine name.. we
couldn't do much better."
 "Settled, then?"
 "Settled."
 The two of them entered their bedroom and stood in the doorway for a moment,
silently observing the crib in the corner. It'd been over two years since
they'd been in this exact same place in their lives, with a new child to care
for, and it was a surprise for them both to be standing there once again.
 Neither of them minded, though; they wouldn't have traded the chance, as the
saying goes, for anything in the world.
 "Theo?"
 "Hm?"
 "Do you think they'll get along?"
 He didn't answer Julia right away, instead gazing at his new daughter for a
moment longer. Something seemed out-of-place, and he was working to figure out
what it was.
 Finally, he realized that, nestled in with Britanny in the crib was a tattered
and battered assemblage of foam and felt: Rags the Rabbit, Gina's treasured
stuffed-toy animal, the one she'd slept with every night for almost two years.
 Theo turned to Julia and smiled. "I think they just might," he said.

-end-