Work Text:
Close Encounters
by Pirate Turner
She was standing on a sidewalk at a busy intersection waiting for the traffic to be stopped when it happened. A car sped by, a window rolled down, and two dark hands threw a defenseless kitten out into the rush hour traffic. She screamed in a string of Irish curses and began to run straight to the kitten, ignoring the honking cars, slamming vehicles, cursing drivers, the claws kneading briskly in her shoulder, and the voice of the one she held dearest in the world warning her that it wouldn't do any good to get herself killed in an attempt to rescue only one animal when she could save so many more if she lived. She was half way through the busy highway when a transfer truck barreled just in front of her.
She screamed again in frustration, Irish curse words spilling from her unpainted lips at least a dozen words a second, as the imagined sight of the tiny, gray fuzzball of a kitten being flattened and crushed to death raced through her panicking mind. As the flaps of the transfer truck slapped against the tires as it at last moved out of her way, she started forward again only to stop and stand still in shock. A man dressed in a floral shirt and striped pants was holding the kitten close to his chest while his head snapped this way and that in search of the best way out of the predicament he'd found himself in. A monkey clung to the man's head for dear life, screeching at the top of his lungs. The wind snapped at the man's hair and snatched the words out of his mouth so that she had no hope of hearing what he was saying, but it was his eyes that caught her attention and held her riveted. Panic filled his eyes, but she also saw therein a desperation and determination to save that one, wee kitten that she never would have thought to see in another living human being's eyes.
His eyes suddenly met hers, and the two stood still with frantic animals' panicked cries filling their ears and the varied voices of the cursing multitude of angry drivers swirling around them. "WATCH OUT!" the cat on her shoulder cried, and the redheaded woman leaped out of the way just in time to avoid the car that had been barreling down on her. She turned to look at it, recognized it as the same car that had dropped the poor kitten out of it, and smiled when it suddenly caught a flame.
A scream caught her ears, and the Irish woman whirled around to see the kitten's rescuer about to be run over by a truck. She smiled when the truck, too, caught flame and skidded out into oncoming traffic and he was able to hurry on to the safety of the sidewalk.
Ace Ventura was panting hard when he finally reached the sidewalk. He kept the kitten pressed close against his thin chest as he turned to look back into the traffic. The kitten's heart was hammering like crazy against his fingers, and he could hear Spike's heart hammering just as swiftly against his head. Ace stroked the kitten and murmured reassuring words that no one would ever hurt her again though those words were drowned out by Spike's furry body wrapped around his mouth. As he tried to reassure his animal friends, Ace turned his gaze out to the burning vehicles and the steadily increasing pile-up of a wreck, but the mysterious Irish beauty who he had now seen for a second time was nowhere to be seen.
The End