A/N a.k.a Bonnie's foreword: (There is nothing better than writing happy Bonnie. She deserves lighthearted no-strings attached or life hanging in the balance type of fun), Night250 (Closer? How intimate are we talking? *wink wink* And yeah, Kai has a twisted sense of humor.), Melika (It was short. Even I complain. *chuckles* I wish we could get to things faster, spit them out at the rate we were before but life's hectic and probably won't be getting any easier with the approaching holidays. But have no fear, we adore this story and will try to keep our updates regular. As for s7 and the rumors, yeah, I'm not down for what's to come with Bonnie in the relationship department, not after having such a teasing taste of Bonkai. It's going to be hard to outdo their potential.), Guest (We couldn't be happier to hear that!), jordanjanellejoy (Bonnie Sheila Bennett-Parker, huh? That's a mouthful. Haha. Don't let Kai hear you say that, he might get ideas and adopt to make it even more uncomfortable.), JustStockton (Bonkaifunday should be a daily event, the only event from here on out. I had far too much fun with it too!), itscalledkarma (If only it could stay that way, Bonnie trapped in fun. Now there would have been a prison world to write home about.)

Thanks once again for all your lovely reviews, we love hearing from you guys and hope you enjoy the next update!

CHAPTER 25

"Let me at least do the Rex," he said once they started up the stairs and into the national museum. It was the one place they'd chosen to do by foot. And the last on their list. "Come on, everybody saw the movies, it'd be fun!"

"Fine," Bonnie answered once they reached the top, the bony structure looming before them in all his prehistoric glory, far larger than she remembered it being when she was a kid. She flashed him a grin to let him know she wasn't kidding. "But no one gets hurt," ahe stipulated in a conspiring whisper, making sure he wouldn't overstep the boundaries of the last few hours. "And be gentle. It's old."

She broke away from him, heading for the information board at the bottom of the bones to read up on its history—to refresh what she already knew. The place was busy, even for a weekday.

Kai watched her back as she strode away towards the show glass with information, wondering if she was daring him or simply didn't believe a second that he would pull this off. He wasn't sure which one was more insulting or exciting.

A boy about nine years old stood by the show glass next to his dad who was eagerly reading aloud, peppering it with Get this, get this!, while the boy himself was making faces and sneakily tapping at the oversized glowing screen of his cell phone. His back was strategically turned to his excited father to cover the phone and pretend he was gaping at the bones while dad got the educational part covered. A group of a dozen Japanese chipped something in return to their guides' tale, flashing their cameras and grinning as they posed at the feet of the dead bones collection. A few loners and two couples strolled slowly around the hall, reading info tablets and gazing at the items.

There came a rattling sound, one you get if you shake a bag with dominoes. No one knew where it was coming from, and few heard at first. The Japanese middle-aged couple posing at the T-Rex did; their smiles slipped off slowly as they observed the guy that was about to take their picture. His face turned into a caricature of their favorite anime characters in a moment of fright: his face got paler, his eyes grew unnaturally wide along with the mouth where high-pitched wheezes were coming from.

One of the museum managers, a sturdy woman of forty-something, happened upon the room at that moment, and now stood gaping and making a sound that was somewhere between squealing and yelling, as if undecided which way to tilt.

The rattling sound got louder, adding a few squeals the connections between the bones gave when the skeleton started to move as though stretching its legs and tail to shake off the long-time stiffness. It shook its big head a little like a dog fresh from a pond, raised it up and gave a startling, screeching roar every fan of Jurassic Park knew so well. That dropped the museum manager down, fainted.

The kid with the cell phone tore his eyes from the screen at once, gaped, then broke into a genuine grin, whispering, "Cool!" His dad wasn't going to back him up on that – his face white and childlike with fear as he scooped his offspring into his arms, backing away in jerks like a spooked crab. The other few observers in the back screamed, a few broke into a run, the others kept standing, unbelieving there is anything that could go wrong in a public place in America that was a magic- and all UFO shit-free. Everybody knows that!

Bonnie dragged her gaze from the fine print and looked up when the bony rattling started above her head. She didn't know whether to smile or grimace. She should have expected it – should have known Kai would accept her tongue-in-cheek challenge. She backed away from the T-Rex as it stretched, awakening like faceless puppy with enormous teeth, expelling a roar so loud and ferocious that she involuntarily lifted her hands to her ears. How was he even capable of doing things like that? How could he effortlessly just fix and destroy all at once?

The T-Rex waved his tail and stepped off the pedestal, observing the squealing Japanese group and the crabwalking dad with his kid in the scoop with its empty sockets and eternal grin. It strolled between them, claws clacking loudly against the waxed floor, and turned to Bonnie who froze at the show glass, wide-eyed.

The Japanese realized the monster wasn't after them, and started clicking their cameras, flashes blinking, imprinting the gigantic skeleton shadow upon the viewers in the vicinity like a magical cage.

Bonnie took another step back, mimicking the T-Rex's advancement and winced as someone ran into her, nearly knocking her off her feet in their haste to escape. Bad, bad idea!

She looked back in search of Kai, briefly losing him in the chaos, and watched in awe as the skinless frame stomped across the marble floors, a perfect mimic of the graceful and predatory creature it had once been.

It was headed directly for her now, overlooking the people around and the enthusiastic photographers. Bonnie fought the urge to run. Instinct, she supposed.

The skeleton canted its head left and right, like an inquisitive dog, observing the girl. She smiled softly, a measure of joy that faded when something hard barreled into her side and knocked her off her feet. She grunted as her body collided with the floor, wincing as pain radiated through her left elbow and knee. The man might have been a hero—her assumed savior—but vampire finesse he did not have. A few astonished gasps broke over the small Japanese crowd as the heroic American dad made a diving jump, sweeping Bonnie in the flight and landing a couple of feet away from the show glass.

"Wow!" his son commented, aiming his cell at dad's heroism, then back at the dinosaur that seemed amused, his tail waggling lazily.

"Run! Run now," the father ordered Bonnie, trying to get up and beckoning his son at the same time. "Come on, Justin!"

Justin would have none of his dad's bullshit. He forgot himself, filming the wonder on his phone, grinning like a kid who got the present of his life from Santa personally. The Rex clacked his claws towards him, its head inquisitively low as though to sniff the boy.

Bonnie drew her gaze from the two, frightened that Kai might get some twisted idea and have the thing attempt to eat the child. She could never tell which way he'd go and if he'd take it too far. It was already beyond repair.

His dad gave a yell of a gorilla and lounged to fit between his son and the monster, but the monster's tail caught him around the waist and sent him flying under another installation. His son paid little mind.

Kai approached Bonnie from behind, wrapped an arm around her waist. "I think we better make ourselves scarce now before cops or SWAT arrive."

"You couldn't have kept him on the podium?" she asked, rubbing at her elbow for emphasis before enclosing a hand over his wrist.

"Would you stay on the podium you've been stuck on for years when you could walk around and stretch a bit?"

It didn't seem like a good idea from the common sense perspective to leave the T-Rex to its own devices until the magic in it ran out (Kai had no idea when that would be – in a few minutes or hours), but from his point of view it wasn't bad. Bonnie, in her overexcited and tipsy mind, seemed to be missing the cleaning-up part, which was okay with him.

She jerked him toward the entrance and into a jog, easily assuming the role of frightened and skittish museum-goer fleeing an impossible dinosaur attack. It wasn't hard—not for either of them as no one was paying attention to anything or anyone else. T-Rex had the floor.

They circled around the museum to get their Segways. There was another roar behind their backs as they hurried along the Mall. More people headed to where they were fleeing from, attracted by the sounds and hoping for fun. Kai wondered if that was what they were going to find there.

Enough was enough – the joke had reached it pinnacle point. "Would you stop that already," Bonnie chided once they reached the side of the building and approached our Segways. She reached for her helmet, inspecting it for bird poop. "How are you even able to keep controlling it from here?"

"Well, I could, but I don't. Not anymore."

Bonnie stopped toying with the straps of the helmet and gave Kai a contemplative look. He had to be kidding.

Kai weighed the helmet in his hand, not in the mood to put the stupid thing on, then hung it by its strap on the Segway steer. "The magic soaking it will evaporate sometime soon, and he'll be dead relic again, but for the moment Mr. Bones is on his own. I'm not sure what's driving him now… maybe his memory – you know, it's stored in his bones even if they're dead for ages. Information never truly disappears, like any form of energy."

"What are you saying?" she snapped, setting the helmet back on the Segway, ignoring it as it pelted off on the other side and rolled to the ground. She couldn't care about the deposit now. "Are you saying that thing is alive? That you went above playing puppet master and gave it life?"

Kai observed her with a smile both sheepish and wicked. Inside the museum, the screams grew louder and more alarmed. Glass was breaking, people stomping as they ran, the Bones' claws clicking against the floors as it tried to pick which human ant to pursue.

All the blood drained from Bonnie's face, her ears settled on the noise in the distance. Was it just her or were the screams getting louder? More terrified.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" she shook her head disbelievingly as she backtracked away from him, running back toward the museum, but then the reason of the havoc emerged from its former prison, threw back its head and gave another roar of triumph.

Some people screamed, some took pictures. Children pointed, parents grabbed them tighter and retreated as rapidly as they could. The Rex directed itself to the nearest ice cream tent – the terrified dealer was sprinting across the lawn with some other visitors – and sent it flipping over onto the grass with a push of the side of its head. The screams drew its attention back to the living things around, and it started towards the closest group aiming their iPhones at it.

Bonnie gawked at the skinless creature in horror as it broke free of the museum, scattering glass and screaming people in every direction, a few dawdling just long enough to take blurred pictures and videos alike.

'Run you idiots!' she wanted to scream. She instead tried to focus, to conjure up a spell to render the beastie useless without drawing too much attention to herself. She didn't want this to turn into some big x-men reveal and spend the rest of her days living in a sewer running from the government or the equivalent of SHIELD. She cringed as the faceless creature sent the ice-cream stand sailing and turned its ferocious care on the populace again. Her heart hammered in her chest, growing to deafening proportions as she absorbed the scene before her. It was unreal. Bonnie raised an impulsive hand to the air, aiming to send the lethal animal reeling and those bones sprinkling in the wind like leaves when all of a sudden a hand clamped around her elevated arm to deter her. She gasped.

Kai pulled her against him. "Come on, Bonsy, it's too good to be a puppet. Didn't you ever want to see one in its natural glory? I mean, yeah, it's bony, but it's real. And it's free, even if for just a bit. It's finally free, and you, the compassionate one, want me to kill it again?"

She struggled against his censured hold, bringing her heel down upon the top of his foot repeatedly, elbowing him for emphasis and until he'd released her. She put space between them as soon as she was free, glaring at him.

"This isn't some perverse metaphor you can use to relate to your life, Kai!" she hissed crossly, picking up on the miniscule undertones and similarities. She wasn't even sure it was intentional on his part. "These are innocent people!"

Kai looked at the T-Rex; up from its hinder legs, it started to gain flesh, like in a computer 3D simulation. Sinews, muscles, skin covered the aged bones within seconds. People gaped as it approached, forgetting to run for a few dangerous moments. The Rex itself felt a change and gave another roar, sending the closest humans scattering and celebrating its newly gained power.

Bonnie shook her head with disgust and turned back to the creature, her eyes widening as flesh sprouted from bone like a well-watered plant and grew to cover every square inch of its oversized body. It gave another roar, an animalistic sound that made her blood turn cold. She shook off her shock and raised a hand again, directing it at the animal, keeping it from being able to move before muttering, "Illucescente!"

Its neck snapped—much like she craved to do to Kai—and went down, landing without grace in the middle of the enormous courtyard.

Kai pulled Bonnie to him once again, restraining her arms gently with his hands, her back pressing into his front. "Did no one ever tell you that simple thing? You cannot kill something that's already dead."

The dinosaur picked itself up with effort – having no normal front legs to help must suck, Kai thought – and cast a bird-like gander around, in search of a prey.

Bonnie glowered as the briefly unconscious dinosaur stirred and tried to stand up, wriggling like a fish out of water, his tailing swishing to and fro wildly, his teeth gnashing at the air. It was back on his clawed feet far too quick for her liking.

"No one is innocent, Bons," Kai said into her ear. "But if you wanna restore the world's balance, you can do it easily – we both know it. This is not a living creature – not in the way you perceive it. It thinks it is, but in fact, it's like that Energizer bunny from the ads. The power I gave it is the battery. You can't pull it out, but you can use it and deplete it in the process. You can channel nature and its power – you can do the same with this lizard. Go ahead." He released her and stepped back, curious whether alcohol in her blood would enhance or cripple her execution.

Bonnie exhaled as his arm fell away from her waist and he took a step back. She raised her hand, neglectful of being seen, and immobilized the creature before it could think to charge or bend down to snack on someone close by.

No one else appeared to notice.

She could feel a hallow pain build behind her eyes, an onset from either the alcohol she'd consumed for breakfast or the strength of the magic that bound the creature. She couldn't tell. She gritted her teeth, walking the T-Rex away from the ground like a dog on a leash, driving him toward an open expanse of grass away from people.

How long would this magic last and who would win? She or it?

Bonnie made no response and tried to restrain her emotional turmoil to focus. Kai could sense his skin prick with goosebumps as she collected herself and held a hand out, connecting to the energy driving the T-Rex. She was straining – due to all the factors like alcohol in her blood and emotions running rampant – but she got a lock-on and the T-Rex froze, then started to move where she directed.

"Put him back on his pedestal and pull the battery out," Kai said into her ear, leaning in from behind. "You can do it, we both know you can."

Bonnie inhaled as if she'd absorbed a little strength from the creature, and towed him from the grass, ignoring his noisy animalistic sounds of objection and the way his thick nails raked the earth, leaving thick furrows in the soil. She guided him across the cement, past the flashing camera lights, away from the destruction of the ice-cream tent and back up the array of stairs. She trailed after him, being careful, gentle even, trying to avoid the people still standing around in wonder, too stupid to even consider the danger they were in and that what was happening was unnatural. Still, no one got in her way, no one even looked at her, and it was as if they didn't see her at all.

The dinosaur raised its head and roared, a rigorous disturbance that no longer held ferocity but distress, as if it could sense that things were inches away from drawing to close on its untimely chapter.

Bonnie could even allow herself to feel a hint of guilt.

"Recedemus," she commanded, ignoring the animal's startling growl of pain as flesh smelted off the bone, followed by the muscle and other finer tissues, outwardly dismantling it the same way it'd been created.

Though Kai let Bonnie handle it herself just as he intended, he could sense her straining as she tried to tame the power animating the T-Rex. It wasn't her usual exercise in channeling energy, he reckoned, and having been drinking before didn't help, either. His nerves tingled as he watched her at work, like some wonder-girl from a superhero movie that suddenly came to live around him. It excited him that she never gave up, and it excited him to see she managed – even though he had little doubts she would, he was prepared to lend a hand, even if a secret one.

Before long, it was back on his pedestal, lifeless and held together by an assortment of different ropes and doohickeys to make sure it didn't fall apart again. The only indicator that it'd even moved, that there had even been a disturbance was the video clips on a few random phones, the trussed up lobby and bad mow job outside. But at least no one was seriously injured or dead. Bonnie lowered her arm, feeling a touch lightheaded once done and a semblance of pain building behind her eyes. Could nothing be easy?

"Let's go," she said, assuming Kai was close by or at least within hearing range. "Getting out of here is going to be worse than getting in." People fleeing, cars riding into one another in their attempts at escape, humans where at their worst amidst chaos.

Some gawkers followed the dinosaur from outside and were now snapping shots and talking. The Museum's workers gathered in another part of the room, consulting with each other. No one minded the witches.

Kai stepped closer to her in case her legs betrayed her, and observed the aged skeleton on the pedestal it had been lucky to leave for some half an hour. A faint smile twitched in the corners of his mouth.

"Wow, Bonnie, you open up from quite a new perspective. With your sky-high morals and compassion that could make a maniac cry, you have just tortured a dinosaur out of his skin, literally! Who knew you had it in you! I mean, I suspected there had to be a quirk like that hiding beneath all layers of good and kindness – there always is with a power like yours flowing through one's system – but making a giant predator scream in pain while peeling its skin and tissues off? And draining it of life? God, that's…" Kai looked at her with fascination that could easily be mistaken for morbid rapture. "That's scary. In a weirdly hot way."

Bonnie faltered a tad, taking a moment to consider what she'd done to that animal at its insistence. It hadn't been the T-Rex's fault it was revivified, yet there hadn't been time to convey a less painful method of shutting it down. She threw Kai a sidelong look, shuddering softly. She didn't like the way Kai was looking at her in light of the creature's torture or the fact that he appeared pleased with it. His insinuation frightened her.

"I did what I had to do to keep that thing from hurting anyone else," she retorted defensively, bending to lift her helmet off the ground once they'd reached their abandoned Segways again. She toyed with the strap and eased the silly thing back on her head, securing it under her chin. "There is nothing underlining about that."

She narrowed her eyes as if to silently dare him to prove her otherwise, hardly giving him the time as she moved to reclaim her ride. Bonnie checked for the key and started it up, steadily making her way back to the car. People were still running, car horns honking like crazy in the distance and the nearer they got to the parking lot.

"Of course there is," Kai disagreed. "Whatever the way you picked to deal with him, you gained all the power that was left there to drain. See, no blood's coming from your nose."

She gave him a look and impulsively lifted a hand to her nose. She was almost expecting blood to appear, to prove both him and her wrong and split her head open like a ripe melon. That was the way of her luck.

"Oh, and I kept you cloaked while you were playing dinosaur exorcist, so there'll be no YouTube videos of Bennett the Wonder Woman saving Washington form Jurassic Park invasion. You're welcome." He started rolling along the Mall's pavement to where they left the Ford.

She blinked after him as he started rolling his way toward the car, speeding up to ride side by side.

"Thank you," she said in spite of the fact that everything they'd dealt with in the last hour was his fault. He took her challenge far too literally. She was going to have to watch what she said. "I mean… for err… shielding me."

She left it at that, unsurprised to find that once they reached the cordoned-off station for the Segways, there was no one there to receive them. She bounced off the machine, removed the helmet, and headed for the car.

"Any idea how you're going to get us out of here before the sunsets?" she said once they'd both climbed into the car. There was an accident in the middle of the lot, two people yelling at each other, others paying no mind to anyone else trying to gun for the exit.

"Piece of cake."

Kai revived the engine, put his hands on the steering wheel, and closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, concentrating. Then he threw Bonnie an impish grin, and jump-started from the spot, tires squealing. The road was packed with vehicles stuck flank to flank and nose to butt like sardines in a can, and they went through them as though the panorama around them was no more than a ghostly vision. Or perhaps in this scenario it was them who had become ghosts in the middle of the living people's drama. Soon enough, the noises died out behind them as they neared the outskirts of the city, already obeying the traffic rules. Kai tightened his fingers on the wheel, grounding himself as he felt a trifle dizzy. The cloaked jump had taken its toll. He wasn't going to have a nose-bleed, but he could feel weakness crawl in like a shy snake and coil in his solar plexus morphing into hunger.

"Any new destination in mind yet, Miss Tamer-of-Dragons?"