Maria De Guzman takes a walk in the woods outside the college town where she lives to enjoy some peace and quiet. It's also a chance to see what she can do as the Jaguar.
After spending a moment wondering how her costume transported itself from her closet to her body, she tests her long jump. A quarter of a mile's not bad, but only makes her question what she is even further. She sets off running and easily catches a squirrel, noting the animal didn't fear her when men did, and which is the wiser? Leaping to the top of a tree to enjoy the view, Maria marvels at how she can hear the students back on campus (which she described as 45-minute walk). But she also hears gunshots.
The shooting is the local sheriff and one of his deputies, plinking away at cans on a fence while another deputy takes the statement of a farmer about a break-in on his property last night. The shooters are a couple of dopes, as the sheriff tells the deputy that if those cans were 'international drug lords, they'd have fried you by now, Zimo!' Don't see the issue, the drug lords are clearly just selling to the squirrels.
Zimo responds he wants to live in frontier days, so he could slay savage Indians, but the sheriff objects to that talk. He's one-quarter Cherokee, after all! The deputy argues the sheriff, named Dal Zehnder, is German, but the sheriff insists his people crossed the land bridge from Asia 20,000 years ago! At least he's not buying into the Clovis hypothesis. He also doesn't know why Zimo needs a .44 Magnum, but Zimo argues it's for Bigfeet and Sasquatches, right about the time the Jaguar arrives to see what's happening. Zimo's immediate response is to shoot her. Credit to the sheriff, he's really sticking to his "one-quarter Cherokee" bit with the 'stupid white-eyes' remark.
Fortunately, the bullet didn't penetrate, sparing Zimo's hours of trying to figure out how a subliterate dolt like himself could fill out a report on the shooting. While Zimo and Dal tell the other deputy, Jaguar runs into the woods. The farmer says the only other damage was to the cover of his old well, and when the competent deputy offers to board it up, she falls in. The Jaguar's made it to a road and switched back to Maria. Maria can feel the pain of the gunshot, but also hears the shouts (the Jaguar abilities seem to be leaking over) and immediately switches back to the Jaguar to investigate, not watching to see what's ahead.
Ouch. Still, she returns to the farm, where the deputy (one of the other cops refers to her as "Rocky", but the other called her "Lucky") is alive, but partially buried. The Jaguar climbs down, but she's a lot heavier in this form, so the side of the well collapses, burying her, too. She begins to panic, unconsciously reverting to Maria as she curses her overconfidence for killing the cop. But Lucky's not dead, and not able to see who's with her, tells "Jaguar" how she was thinking of stories about dragons her grandmother who came from Japan told. About them being forces for good.
This lasts 3 panels, but is enough to spur Maria into transforming back and leaping to safety with "Lucky" in a scene I used for Sunday Splash Page #274. After that, there's one page of Maria back in her dorm room, noting her cuts healed within an hour, and that something about her made the people (especially the guys) afraid. I don't think Messner-Loebs ever delves into if she's got a pheromone thing going, like Jessica Drew used to, or if it's something magic or what.
{5th longbox, 7th comics. The Jaguar #7, by William Messner-Loebs (writer), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (penciler), Mike Manley and Bruce N. Solotoff (inkers), M. Hollingsworth (colorist), W. Schubert (letterer)}
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