18: Moonstone

The chair rose and then toppled. If she had been home alone she would have reached for one of the handguns she had secreted around the place. Instead her hand shot out to grab the hood of Joshua's scarlet hoodie, the wide eyed boy slid at speed on his butt across the kitchen floor before Emma wrapped him in her arms shielding him.
.oO(Purple panther) she thought, then cussed herself for sloppy aliteration as the main window of the kitchen shattered.
She pulled out her phone and shouted 'intruder alert'.
Moments later as she was comforting Joshua her phone responded.
"Bishop."
"Lucas there's a large purple cat on the loose, it just escaped from my house. It's a shapeshifter."
"Okay Emma stay put Sontag is on her way to you. School is on lockdown."
Joshua had been scared at first but soon recovered quickly. He was a very resiliant kid.
"We must be really scary people Mama," he said smiling. "I hope Mr Bishop doesn't hurt Moonstone."
Emma knew that lethal force was a last resort but with a shapeshifter on site there was no way of telling which way it would go.
Philipa Sontag arrived, armed to the teeth not that she needed weapons, she was lethal enough in her own right. Joshua said hello brightly and she ruffled his hair. She checked the pair were okay and said they had to get to the mansion, Emma's house was on the north side of the island so Sontag had brought a car.
A fair bit of the island was open space, some was wooded, but a panicking purple cat cannot go unnoticed for long. Moonstone scared a group of kids who were doing forest schools for the afternoon and was lucky not to get incinerated or skewered for her trouble. The three X-Men - as the students had branded them - arrived at the camp
along with Baer. Harry Rutherford pointed into the trees and the quartet spread out and jogged off. Noah was the one who found Moonstone. wounded and unconscious, he put away his tazer and called it in as he covered her with his leather jacket to protect her dignity.
"It's not a cat, it's a girl. She is unconscious and naked but has some glass shards embedded in her."
"Don't try removing them," a voice barked.
"Well duh," the Afrikaans youth said. "She has purple hair though."