Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible, Tara or Bonnie. They are owned by Disney and Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley. Any original characters shown or mentioned belong to me and can not be used without permission. Okay?

Totally Tara!

Chapter Four – At Attention!

"Welcome to the Zero Emission Universal Smarthouse, or ZEUS, Mark Two," Vivian Porter declared rather proudly, her arms wide in an all-encompassing gesture as she moved backwards to the center of the level. Tara and Bonnie were still standing in the doorway, having just followed her into the saucer-shaped structure, eyes blinking to adjust to the darker interior. "Come on in, let me give you the dollar tour," she cooed. "This is but the first level with two more below."

As the other blonde and brunette sauntered in – Rufus leaping down to explore on his own – Tara's eyes wide with unabashed glee and Bonnie's their normal narrowed slits, the doctor of robotics pointed out initial features. Three large pane windows set to one end looked out onto the water of the Bay Harbor. Parts of North and East Beaches were visible in the distance. Set under the length of the frames were a series of consoles, their purpose not self-explanatory. Immediately before them was a comfortable looking wide three person couch which, Vivian explained, the outer positions of could slide up to the controls.

Smack center of the level was a domed instrument-cluster pedestal with three chairs arranged around it. Apparently either the console or one of the seats could extend upward to the centralized domed skylight, again purpose undisclosed.

The twenty-something blonde continued to point out various other features, including several glassy tubes large enough to hold a person. She explained they were intended for suspended animation cryogenics-sleep and also capable of maintaining any sort of atmospheric conditions inside.

"What do we need all that for?" Bonnie asked snidely.

"I guess you'd really not have much use… ."

"They'll make excellent holding cells!" Tara enthused. "You know, for the criminals we'll arrest and capture until the authorities can collect them."

"Whatever…," the mousy-haired girl shrugged it all aside. She wandered as the blondes discussed the holding tubes more.

"…ithstand bombs like the ones…?"

The debutante mostly ignored the various clusters of computers, instruments, microwaves, Mr Lattes, and whatever which did God-knows-what. Sure she would need to eventually learn their uses, after all it was not like she could expect simple Tara to comprehend them…

"Is that a pulse-Doppler radar weather monitoring system?"

…could she?

"You know it! Complete with live uplinks to weather satellites," Vivian smiled, nodding

"GOES?" the other squealed excitedly. For her everything about this was exciting.

"Ten to Twelve."

"Goes where?" Bonnie asked absently from where she explored a quarter way across and ahead from the pair. She checked her watch, "And it's only nine-thirty

"No, silly. Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites," the answer came not from Dr Porter but from a barely acknowledging Tara as she experimentally poked at the unit, "Only numbers ten through twelve are active. And they're stationary, so it doesn't 'go' anywhere… wow complete with EPIRB and ELT receivers."

"With what now?"

Still hardly paying her friend any mind, Tara said, "Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons and Emergency Locator Transmitters. For SARs."

Finally noticing what was actually coming out her squad-mate's mouth, Bonnie turned. Tara's rump was on prominent display as she was bent over examining something low to the floor. It waggled as she shifted her weight back and forth on her legs. The rich girl flushed a moment. If she's going to do that more often, I should lift her skirt's hem at least three more inches…, "Sars?"

"Search and Rescues," came the absent response.

The brunette shook her head. Must come from having a scientist for a cousin. Or more likely Vivian already mentioned most of it last night. They are an expressively communicative family after all, nothing like my own… .

Full circle, she was back to the space-aged airlock-like double sliding doors of the entrance, though the inner one was locked open. Taking note of a closet just to the right she checked it out, finding it stocked with some high-tech mission gear including the blue and mustard jackets with swapped front panels from the look put together for their first media conference.

"These aren't quite the same," the Rockwaller girl noted with a critical eye. "They're a bit spiffier than the originals."

"They've been uprated from normal fabrics," Cousin Viv explained. "Outwardly the same, they're now infused and backed with space-aged polymers which are heat and flame retardant, waterproof, and impact resistant up to forty-five caliber rounds at thirty feet."

Tara's eyes got brighter, if that was at all possible, "Oooo, animal stripes! Shiny!" Sure enough the jackets, boots and berets had black stripes on them.

"I know you love animal prints," the older blonde supplied.

Bonnie's grin was feral, "I see I'm a tiger. Very fitting."

Tara giggled.

"What, T?"

"I have the tiger stripes, B."

"What're you talking about? Black stripes on blue, yeah, nice, but what animal is that?" the rich girl held up her mustard jacket, "Now black on brown, that's tiger."

"Silly… those are zebra stripes!" the blonde pointed out various aspects of the pattern. "See? Wider, less zig to the zags. Zebra."

Bonnie glared at the closet. I can't believe this! Tara's the predator and I'm… I'm prey? Will the insults never end?

As Bonnie flew through the air, having been launched off the armored car, her thoughts snapped back to the moment. Funny what you think about when sure you're going to die…

The amazingly strong kick from the diminutive catgirl, in addition to having knocked the breath from her body, was sending the mousy-haired teen ahead and high of the racing armored vehicle. Now that her mind returned back to the moment everything slowed to crystal clarity for her. With a calm detachment she watched as her blonde friend was tossed from the back of the truck… is she… flipping into a dismount?? …before an awareness of another overpass looming up behind caught her full attention.

Like the day with the bomb in her bedroom, reflexes she hardly realized honed took over. As loathe as the debutante was to admit it, the extra hard routines Kim had put the cheer squad through, as well as offering pointers for things like gymnastics and track and field, came into play. Treating her situation as a routine going wrong, she resisted the urge to gasp and draw air back in, instead forcing the rest from her lungs and thereby reasserting her body's control of the process. That immediate cause for panic dealt with, Bonnie found her body flattening out into the lead-in of a Fosbury Flop, as if in mid-flight for a high-jump. Just as long as I don't hit the side of the overpass! At seventy-five miles an hour that'll be a hurting I won't walk… or even limp… away from.

Fortunately for the mousy-haired girl the overpass was another of those for emergency services and state police… And just where are they with all this going down on their road? …to cross from north-to-southbound. She was not going to have to contend with traffic, avoiding vehicles like that old lame-o computer game which her mother loved. The one with the frog.

Bonnie cleared the initial railing with no problem, but could feel she was not going to make it across the bridge's entire thirty-something foot width and clear the other rail. Fortunately the debutante's Kim-envy kicked in. Unconsciously tucking into a ball, she then unfolded at the roadway's midpoint. Briefly palms were planted, protected from friction burns by the new-age polymers of her gloves. The entire over-passing roadway acted as a gigantic gymnastic vaulting horse, seventy-plus miles an hour meeting stationary, and the action debutante was kicked higher like a skipped stone, clearing her easily over the far-side railing.

Seeing she was coming back down to firmly remake a truck-top landing, she was able to turn her attention to where she last saw her partner… Where the hell could she have been trying to dismount to…?

Just a minute before the slip of blondeness had been dipping and weaving wickedly slashing claws nearly as long as the forearms of the perpetrator – Chuchie by name – waiting for the opening such evil-doers inevitably provide. She hiccuped an eep! when her jacket was unexpectedly grabbed from behind and she pitched backwards off the vehicle. Which was when she remembered the dark cheetah-girl who had been climbing up the back…

…and her twin!

Once again her forebrain disengaging, Tara serenely tucked briefly into a ball, increasing her spin to bring feet back under her. Unfolding with a twist, the blonde could only see the Turnpike's blacktop racing underneath between splayed knees and legs crossed at the ankles.

That was, until the final inverse cheetah-skinned catgirl's face – the last one running to catch the truck – came into view, eyes wide in surprise. The sheer unexpectedness of the audacious maneuver had frozen the thief in place, or rather in relative position, unable to even think of swerving out of the way.

"Angie‼" came a frantic cry from above. "Watch out‼"

Tara hit the girl's back, hands on shoulders, knees clenching for purchase at her waist. Grunting with the impact, arms were thrown forward as the blonde's one hundred and twenty-two pounds forced the furry one to fall face first. Palms slapping the roadway at speed, Angie frantically tried to regain her balance under the sudden load. To keep from plowing into the fast lane's hard asphalt surface.

To run on all fours.

Tara grinned sweetly as after about ten to fifteen feet the other under her finally regained a semblance of balance enough to ensure they would not end up in a heap. Executing a surfer's pop-up, in one smooth move Tara was upright, feet planted along the feline girl's back. She giggled, "Whee! Cat-a-bunga!"

"G'off m'back!" Angie growled, unable to do much at that speed under the load other than continue her all-fours scramble. "Aqua! Do something!"

From the vicinity of the armored car, "Hang on Sis!"

That warning was enough for Tara to glance up. The dark cheetah-skinned twin was in mid-leap, right leg extended in a drop-kick. However the blonde was no longer there. She had already kicked off to the right in a side-twisting back-flip, the launch itself nearly upsetting the 'four legged' Angie into kissing the blacktop. Having been aiming for Tara's chest, Aqua cleared her sister entirely, nimbly landing on the roadway for but half a second before recovering into a leap. Working as she was with the physics of seventy mile an hour inertia, the rebound spun her into a hard somersault, clearing her over the car following a few lengths back to land on the hood of an SUV an equal length behind, denting it. Taking a few seconds to regain her bearings she looked about for the blonde… .

On the dashboard just above the glass half-globe that was the seat of SADIE's brain, Rufus had squawked in unabashed terror as he watched his newest human go flying off the armored car high into the air. Moments later seeing the brunette was going to remake the truck he sighed in relief just before being pitched from dashboard to backseat as SADIE shifted itself into motion. Skidding wide to the side while reorienting nose to front, the Smart Cart fishtailed around just in front of a Mac truck in the slow lane for the besieged vehicle's rear only to stop in the middle lane upon finding the blonde leaping straight for them.

At some point Tara's subconscious had locked in not only the positions of everything about the armored vehicle – which came in handy in the form of using Angie as a landing pad – but also somehow knew the computerized car's response would place it where she needed it to be. Consciously the blonde never gave it a second thought.

Or a first, for that matter.

Rufus regained the dashboard in time to chitter excitedly as Tara skidded across SADIE's hood, first polymerized soles, then palms, screeching in protest like rubber across dry glass. She came to a stop with lower half hanging off, legs bent at the knees to prevent feet from touching the ground racing below.

Atop the armored van the one with the foot-long claws, Chuchie, watched in begrudging amazement as the slip of blue and blondeness first avoided splattering across the blacktop, and then evaded her acrobatic teammate. The pronounced blades retracted back into hands and feet. She started to turn back for the cab of the van and the auger-like rig when a shadow crossed her face. The catgirl had just enough time to register the dropping mousy-haired sidekick before she was, well, side-kicked.

Incoming! Bonnie's heel connected across the feral girl's chin. Her head snapped hard to the right, body spinning to follow, tail wrapping legs.

"Chuch!" Having been focusing on trying to revive the one which looked like Monique – Bubbles she had been called – with light slaps to the face, the youngest cheetah-skinned thief dove across the width of the armor-plated roof to catch her companion.

While making one rebound flip before sticking her 'dismount' near the rigged-up drill over the driver's compartment, the teen-aged debutante took note of the little curly-haired blonde's strength for the third time. The first had been when she kept Monique-Bubbles from flying off the vehicle. The second had been the wickedly vicious kick which sent Bonnie flying, and this third display was equally impressive. Leaping off the vehicle after Chuchie, the tween wrapped one arm about a waist while gripping a virtually invisible seam in the armored metal with the clawed fingernails of her free hand. After a thwump! against the side of the van, the slight blonde tossed up the unconscious body before struggling to pull herself up as well.

"In…con…cievable…," she panted, glaring daggers at the brunette.

"There's that word again," Bonnie snarked, arms making a voilà! gesture.

Struggling to pull herself fully back onto the blue Camaro, Tara looked up when she felt it lightly brake, a momentary pause designed to prevent the incoming Aqua's leap to miss her head. Without conscious thought the blonde hero swung right palm to catch behind the thief's heel. A movement of only two inches more than enough to throw the attacker off balance, causing her to land on her butt, rebounding off and in front of the semi. The hyper-acrobatic thief used her high-speed inertia to redirect into a jump which carried her just past the truck's cab where she was able to snag mirror mountings.

Both girls pulled themselves up onto their respective vehicles.

Bonnie watched with a measure of unease as the super-strong cheetah-skinned tween regained her feet, tawny eyes flashing and tail jerking side to side in feline anger. Can't let her get close to me again. The auger-drill at the edge of her vision provided a bolt of inspiration. I'll just remove their reason to continue this fight… With a grinning sneer, Bonnie delivered a few rapid side kicks to the rig, first couple to free it from its tap-welds, then off the vehicle completely.

Turning back from watching as it bounced over the K-rail dividing the roadways from truck and cars-only south-bound traffic, a couple cars swerving to avoid the thing amid blaring horns, the young blonde stared hatefully at Bonnie. "Shadowy Military Dude didn't say you'd be this much trouble!" Quickly scooping up the unconscious Bubbles and Chuchie, one over each shoulder, she ran to the rear edge of the roof.

"CHEETAHS‼" she called at the top of her lungs, "Withdraw‼"

Then she was gone. Despite the load of her teammates she jumped, leapfrogging easily across the tops of vehicles like stones across a river, leaving dents with each landing until reaching a semi in the farthest northbound truck lane.

Acrobatic Aqua had just gained the top of her truck when the order came. "Angie?"

"Here!" the running twin called, maneuvering behind SADIE and alongside the eighteen-wheeler. "Ready!" Once her sister had leapt onto her back similar to how Tara had, but apparently more prepared for it, she cut back across the traffic and hurdled the divider. At seventy miles an hour they too were soon out of sight.

A few minutes later found both heroes slipping back into their automated car.

"Good work!" … "Are you okay?" … "…thought you were a goner!" … "…kewl how you went over that bridge!" they babbled at the same time while hugging each other, Rufus dashing back and forth between them trying to hug both as well. Their reunion was interrupted by insistent beeping from the dedicated cellphone.

"Team ATAR," Tara answered lightly, ignoring her friend's grunt of exasperation, "Who's calling? Oh! Hi Snow! Huh? Oh sure, we're both fine… You're okay, right Bon?"

"I'll survive. Uhg! Chill, Rat!"

"Yup, both okay, Snow! Y'all doing okay in there? Kewlies! B, do we want to stop?" The brunette shook her head and tapped the gas gauge with a fingernail. "That's a negger-tory there Snow, we'll stick to the pit-'n'-piss stop schedule. Okkiees! Uh-huh, yup, buh-bye!"

She hung up. "That was Snow, B."

"I never would have guessed…," the brunette rolled her eyes. "SADIE, can you locate a former schoolmate of ours?"

"I can of course try, Ms Rockwaller," the AI's warm female voice washed over them. "Whom shall I search for?"

"Monique Lapowsky. Her current whereabouts and if she's done any recent travel outside of Middleton in the past week."

Tara frowned slightly, "What's up, B?"

"One of those catgirls was the splitting image of Monique. Could have been her twin but for the ears and fur," Bonnie explained.

"No way!"

"Way."

SADIE responded, "I highly doubt then it was Ms Lapowsky."

"You sure?"

"Well there is never a one hundred percent guarantee with anything, Ms Rockwaller," the half-globe pulsed in her direction. "However her phone records show she has not left the Middleton area in the timeframe specified. In addition she is and has been in a telephone conversation for the past forty-four minutes with her brother."

"Told y'so," Tara wrinkled her nose at her suspicious friend.

"Yeah, well, it's always good to be certain," the debutante asserted. "Hey! You don't monitor our phone calls, do you? Specifically, mine?"

"Of course not Ms Rockwaller. I am incapable of such an invasion of privacy unless at the explicit instructions of authorized users such as you and Ms Queen," the car's brain assured.

"Yeah, well, let's be sure to keep it that way."

"Certainly, Ms Rockwaller."

"Good." Bonnie needed the last word.

The rest of the trip, including two stops for gas and food, was uneventful. Four hours later found the two-vehicle convoy pulling up to the receiving docks of the Jeffersonian in D.C.

As by previous agreement, the armored van remained sealed while the teenaged heroes met with several people. Most were obviously warehouse types waiting to unload the exhibit pieces. Three, a man and two women, separated to meet Tara and Bonnie half-way. Tall and darkly handsome in a business suit the man flashed a badge in one hand while extending the other in introduction, "FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth."

Trying to keep her hormones on an even keel, Bonnie took it, "I'm Bonnie Rockwaller and this is my partner, Tara Queen. Of Team TARA." The blonde waved brightly.

Agent Booth smiled affably. "I hear you had some excitement on the trip down. Glad to see you handled things and everyone is alright. You're sure the perpetrators never breached the car?"

"Positive!" Tara assured. "Bonnie like, totally stopped their drill thingie practically before they even started."

"No big," the words were out of Bonnie's mouth before registering she was using a Kim-phrase. Mentally she kicked herself. It is so a big! I mean, we kicked cat-tail and foiled a robbery in progress!

However once having taken a stance of modesty, there was no appropriate way to take it back.

"Yes, so I hear you Middleton cheerleaders say," the agent grinned as one of his women companions cleared her throat.

"Booth, aren't you going to introduce us?" A brunette with mildly feathered hair and clear grey-blue eyes asked. She was gorgeous enough to trigger the mousy-haired girl's jealousy reflex.

"Just waiting for your not-so-subtle reminder there, Bones," he grinned at her. "These are my associates, Dr Temperance Brennan and Ms Angela Montenegro, both of the Jeffersonian."

"Like, nice to meet'cha!" the blonde stepped forward taking each of their hands in turn. "Thanks for using the Recovering Agents of Tactless Assistance."

"RATA? It's T - A - R - A. Y'know, your name?"

"Riiight… ."

"Oh, Sweetie, I like her," the other woman, an exotic blend of various ethnicities among which Asian was the strongest around her eyes, smiled saucily while nudging her friend. She also triggered Bonnie's jealousy reflex, but the candid sizing up and appraisal made her flush as well.

Bonnie turned to the agent, "Don't mind Tara, it's Tactical Assistance and Recovery Agency."

"Angela," Dr Brennan said evenly, "they are still teenagers."

"Barely," the sexy beauty retorted. "Both are clearly over the age of consent, and if they're not doing each other I'll kiss each of them. With tongue."

"Oh, we're no-mmmph…," Tara was silenced by her sidekick's hand clamping over her mouth.

"We're not here to discuss our personal lives," Bonnie interjected smoothly, hoping the bold woman was joking. Very smooth lady, I'll give you that much! She whispered in Tara's ear, "If we deny we're lovers she'll be trying to give us each a 'French Lesson'. I'd rather they think us a couple than that."

"We're a couple?" the blonde whispered back. Her intently shining eyes took Bonnie back a bit.

"I…I'll explain it later, T," she put the topic off for the moment. Angela was watching them with a bemused and knowing expression.

"Really Angela," the man spoke up, "must you mess with them?"

"Aw, but they're so cute!"

"I'm going to have to agree with Booth on this, Angela," Dr Brennan chided. "Now is not the time to be pursuing another one of your sexual conquests."

"Who said anything about just one, Sweetie? I'll take'm both. At the same time. With chocolate syrup."

Agent Booth hemmed over that. He turned to the girls and verbally distanced himself from the free-spirited woman. "Yeah, look, I apologize for my associate's associate. Apparently we don't let her out of the lab often enough. Can you ask the guards to pop the back so we can get started offloading?"

Tara nodded, pulling out the special phone, "Sure thing! Haya, Snow? Yeah, it's okay to open up." Seconds later the back clicked and the Tweedles swung the doors wide, stepping out. Immediately the work crew moved in and started to unpack the vehicle. As soon as each crate was offloaded it was opened and the two women examined the contents.

Midway through the process Dr Brennan shook her head. "Booth!"

"What ya got there, Bones?" the good looking agent ambled over to look over her shoulder. If she was uncomfortable with how close he got she gave no indication.

"Just as we feared, most of the shipment are fakes." She pointed into the crate she was standing over, "However this skeleton is neither a fake nor one of the exhibit pieces."

"Are you certain about this Bones?"

Angela nodded. "Oh, she's sure."

"Absolutely," Bones nodded. "See? This individual has no prognathism, a notable size prominence of the cranial and forehead region, a narrow, tear-shaped nasal cavity, a silled nasal aperture, tower-shaped nasal bones, a triangular-shaped palate, and an angular and sloping shaped eye orbit."

"Yeah, well obviously," Booth nodded as if he understood. "I mean, who could fail to see all of that?" He looked at Angela.

"The person was white, and not one of the races associated with ancient Egypt," the woman translated.

"Ah! See, Bones? Why couldn't you say that?" Booth gestured.

The anthropologist looked at him slightly puzzled, "I did."

"I meant in non-squint-ese," Booth countered. "So, what, a mix-up in packing? A cross-up among the exhibits?"

"Not unless the American Museum of Natural History has a Hall of the Recently Murdered," Bones turned back to the crate. "This person has been dead less than two days."

That caught the agent's attention. "Are you cert…," he paused, holding up both hands, "…you know what? Forget I started to ask. Of course you're certain. Just tell me how you are."

"This is only preliminary. For absolute certainty we'd have to submit it to a complete analysis at the lab. However, according to the scratches in the nasal cavities this man was initially submitted to a partial and amateurish mummification process." When she saw him staring at her blankly, she added, "His brain was pulled out through his nose."

"But he's a skeleton, not a mummy."

"Considering how polished the bones are I'd say the flesh was removed by an acid bath."

"And the two days timeline?"

"See this depression of the left parietal bone?" she indicated the side of skull high above the ear hole. "He most likely died from Blunt Object Trauma. The sharpness of the fracture edges has not yet had any time to wear or dull, which even exposure to air will do." Again she looked up. "That's as far as I'm going to speculate without a proper and thorough examination of the remains."

Booth clapped his hands, "Right! You get the squints right on that."

Angela nodded, "Don't worry Sweetie, I'll see to it." With that she nodded two of the workers over and proceeded to give them instructions while the agent and woman walked over to the teens.

"Girls," Booth started, "what can you tell us about any of this?"

Bonnie shook her head, "Nothing really. The armored car was already being loaded when we first arrived at the museum in New York."

Tara added, "There were twenty-seven crates still on the loading dock. That one was one of them. It was sealed just like the rest."

The dreamy agent raised his eyebrows, "That's pretty specific information, are you certain?"

"Oh she is," the debutante nodded, "Her unconscious memory is like a DVR. You'd be surprised at some of the stuff that gets caught up there."

The woman turned a studious gaze on the blonde, "Fascinating. Eidetic or hyperthymestic memory?"

Tara went, "Hmmmb?"

"Bones, now is not the time for that," Booth chided her. "Anything else?" he prodded the slip of blondeness.

"Oh sure!" Tara proceeded to relate with great detail everything she remembered since their arrival at the New York Museum. While exhaustive, none of it was of much use. "And then they ran off. Since then no one or nothing else got close to the truck."

"How about you?" Booth turned to Bonnie.

"Nope, sorry, T pretty much covered it all… waitaminnit!" she snapped her fingers. "The little strong brat did say something about a 'shadowy military dude' who didn't think we'd be the trouble we were."

"'Shadowy' probably means they never got to see him in clear lighting," the agent tsked in disappointment. "Many contractors are hired in such fashion."

"But Booth," started Bones, "Then how would she have known he was military if he was in the shadows?"

"Ah!" Tara exclaimed suddenly, startling them all. "I know who it was!"

Two hours later that night, a pair of Bell 206L LongRanger helicopters, carrying a total of ten armed FBI operatives not counting pilots, Booth, Bones, Bonnie, and Tara were closing in on Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History. In addition to wearing flak-jackets, all wore headsets to facilitate easy communication. Having had to leave SADIE behind, the teenagers sat back listening to the cross chatter.

"Public hours for the museum are over. All public entrances should be sealed"

"Suspect's vehicle is still in Administration Parking, along with about a half dozen more."

"Then whose are those in the public lot?" Dr Brennan's voice pointed out.

"Possibly belongs to grunts packing the truck to move out the missing exhibit pieces."

Bonnie added, "Then in that case they'd be in the lowest level of the parking structure, where we loaded up."

Booth's voice, "Everyone clear on who we're looking for?" A series of affirmative responses flooded back. "He is the principle target, the rest are small fish and of lesser priority for capture. Still, let's try not to lose any.

"Bones, you and the girls are to sit tight. Wait in the bird."

"But Booth… ."

"I mean it, Temperance." That paused the woman. For the agent to use her first name was an indication of how serious he was. "Stay in the helo!"

"Alright Seeley, I'll stay with the girls."

The tall man nodded in satisfaction as, with near military precision, both aircraft settled down in the public parking lot – closed and cleared after hours – closest to the parking structure. Doors were already opened and the armed men and women of the FBI strike team hit the pavement even before the skids touched down. Slightly bent at the waist they rushed for the entry ramp.

In quick order they were lost in the darkness.

Once the sound of distant gunfire floated back to them, the forensic anthropologist took off her headset and shouted over the engine winding down. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

Bonnie smirked, pulled off her own set and hopped out. Tara looked puzzled but followed. As they closed after the others she said, "But we promised we'd stay put… ."

"No, I promised I'd stay with you girls. I don't recall either one of you promising anything," Bones gave them a half smile.

"Dr Brennan," the rich girl said, "you are positively devious. I admire that."

Just before they reached the ramp leading downward, Tara pointed, "There he is!" A figure had burst from a fire-exit door, heading for around the front of the glass cube enclosing the Hayden Planetarium and the main avenue of Central Park West. A white lab coat could be seen fluttering in the sparse lighting.

"He's making a break for it!" Bonnie added unnecessarily.

"Halt!" Bones called out. "FBI! Drat. Why do I even bother? They always run."

"But we're not federal agents," Tara tossed while sprinting.

"Of the three of us, I'm the closest to one. After all I'm Booth's partner."

"Run feet, not mouths!" Bonnie shouted as she and the blonde pulled ahead. They were younger than Dr Brennan and, unlike her one-inch heels, wore boots with polymerized rubber-like soles. They were almost caught up by the time their quarry made it to the main avenue. Despite the glut of early evening crawling traffic he did not stop, but plunged directly into the sea of cars, most of which were taxi-yellow.

"He's headed for The Park!" Bones added from her position ten paces behind the young heroes.

No shit! Is one of your several doctorates for Stating the Painfully Obvious? the rich girl thought. With barely a glancing nod to each other she and her partner vaulted from the pavement to the hood of a slow-moving cab. From there they ran across the top of cars and taxis, each of which began blowing horns in objection. Several indignant drivers and a few passengers shouted creative and pungent curses after them. Wow, and I thought I had a stinging vocab… .

Just as the smocked perpetrator was clambering over the stout stone wall which defined Central Park from the rest of Manhattan, Team TARA tackled him high and low. All three of them tumbled in a heap across lush green grass.

By the time Bones caught up to them, she had her cellphone out, "Booth! We got him! Just across the street in Central Park. Can we talk about that later? We have him!" Putting it away she pulled out a set of handcuffs her partner had given to her a while back. Tara and Bonnie were sitting on the struggling man's back and pinning his arms behind him. Bones snapped the cuffs on. "You are under arrest for Grand Theft and the Suspicion of Murder…"

Once secured, the former cheerleaders-turned-heroes rose up off the man and together the three women pulled him to his feet.

"…Dr Achie Loligest."

The elderly scientist glared at them. "How'd you know? How'd you know it was me?"

"Oh, easy," Bonnie sneered. "One of the cheetah thieves mentioned a military man in the shadows… ."

Tara finished with a bright smile as she stepped in front of him and adjusted his glasses for him in the same unusual fashion he always did: with the edge of her hand. She then did the same to her own forehead…

"…so we, y'know, thought we'd come in person to salute you… ."

Notes: During the time my inner creative flow was stunted, something broke inside me as apparently I was under so much stress my BP went beyond the neighborhood of 200/100. My meds have been doubled twice… but I'm starting to feel better as it comes back under control.

If you haven't already figured out, the band of thieves in Chapters 3 and 4 are The Cheetah Girls, or rather 'neko-ized' or transformed catgirl versions of. Actually a combination of the versions from both the Disney Channel Original Movies and the original series of novels by Deborah Gregory from which the movies were inspired. The books featured five girls with Dorinda, at twelve years old in her first appearance, the youngest of them. I kept 'Do Re Mi' about the same age and also reinstated Aqua's twin sister Anginette who had been dropped from the screen for lack of finding suitable twin actresses. I use the DCOM actresses for descriptive purposes except for morphing Sabrina Bryan younger, and for the appearances of Bubbles and Monique. Although both characters are played by the same actress, "Monique's" design supersedes Raven's.

How these Cheetah Girls got and get to be this way is yet to be revealed.

A Go Prize to whoever might offer a close guess in a Review. This particular Go Prize is Selecting the Next Fic Update. Yes, the winner gets to jump their favorite Me-only fic to the top of the queue, including any of the upcoming fics currently on my profile page but excluding any Redlined sequels or collabs.

Offer expires 2 weeks from the update-posting date of this chapter, winner shall be posted on both my profile, just under the Update section, and my DA Journal.