DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN BONES (THOUGH I WISH I DID) ALL I OWN IS MY IMAGINATION. (AND THE TYPOS)

WARNING: THIS FAN FICTION TAKES RIGHT AFTER EPISODE 6X09: THE DOCTOR IN THE PHOTO, IF YOU HAVE YET TO SEE THE EPISODE I RECOMMEND WAITING UNTIL YOU DO!

Stressful Enough?

The day had started like no other since the team had come back from their breaks. The lab seemed empty and there wasn't much anyone could do to change it. The wing of the Jeffersonian the forensics lab took care off had been displaying the portraits of the Amelia Rose for weeks now, and there weren't any new projects for exhibition. Equally, with no new bodies to examine and with the Limbo being worked by the interns, the team was free of any activity. The FBI, surprisingly, had not called either which meant the team would be spending the day doing the magnificent activity of handling paper work.

A certain Temperance Brennan sat beside her desk. She wore a sky-blue shirt, her characteristic dolphin ring and dark blue jeans. And something else in her face. A smile.

Yes, Temperance Brennan's life had gone up-side down for three days, yet, she had managed to adapt once again, into what she understood as normality. She sat quietly while going through some papers, when she heard someone coming from the door and stepping right in front of her deck.

"Ok, Brennan, I know you love your work, we all do around here; but the whole thing about it is for it to be stressful" Temperance's eyes met Angela's and as she was about to say something the artist went on "Since we have nothing to do, and this is, just not stressful enough for anyone, maybe a little procrastination" She said pointing the papers on her desk with a finger. "would work good for you, too"

"Angela, that doesn't make any sense" She said with a lively smile, that left her best friend wondering what had happened since the last time they saw each other.

"Is everything ok, Brennan?" She said lifting her weight to one leg and placing a hand in the desk. "You seem way too bubbly today" Said Angela with a curious smirk.

"No, that's not true, I'm not bubbly" She said, going back to her paper work, but still with a suspiciously happy smile "I don't even know what that means, Angela".
But her friend was not convinced and as she was about to go on the other side of the desk to take her away from work, the phone rang.

"Brennan" answered the blue-eyed Doctor. She listened, and glanced at her friend. "I'm on my way" and she was. As soon as she put the receiver down she was out of her office and her friend following closely.

"Ok, here we go again" Angela said at her steps.

"Didn't you say you needed a little stress?" She said turning as she walked out of the lab.

Temperance Brennan's car stopped in front of a house fenced a by dry-stone wall. She stepped out of her vehicle, wondering where had Booth parked his SUV, since all she could see were the Crime Scene trucks and some cops walking around talking in their hand-held transreceivers. While she pulled her bag out of the trunk, an agent approached her with the usual "Doctor Brennan" and nodded politely. "It might be gooey inside, so.." He wasn't done when Brennan pulled her suit from the bag.

"Who are you?" Said Brennan putting her blue whole-body suit on. "and where's agent Booth?"

"Agent Matthew Hyson with the FBI" He said ready for a handshake, that was never given. The man seemed to be in his 20s, Brennan estimated a few years older than Sweets. " He's assigned to another case" The obvious and almost imperceptible sign that Temperance was surprise made the boy nervous but he still went on talking. "He said you would be ok on your own for this one" Awkward pause. Brennan was not amused by the implication that she needed or did not need Booth in this case. She knew the reason wasn't another case, but she decided that wouldn't affect her work.

"So, what do we got?" Putting her black gloves on and letting the conversation go, as if Booth had never been mentioned. They walked to the entrance of the house while Agent Hyson gave her the details.

"According to our records this is Cho Family's House" He said looking through his notes. "Mailman got to the house, knocked twice and found no one home. Since it was early in the morning, he decided to take a look around the house and when he did, he found the decomposing body of, presumably, a male in front of the TV." Brennan seemed to find the agent's explanation somewhat ordinary.

"Then why am I here?" She said stopping. "People die in front of their TVs all the time" She was annoyed already by Booth's absence and now this, was starting to affect her morning.

"I'm sorry, I could have explained it better" He said adjusting his collar. "When the police arrived, they found not only someone in the living room, but a woman in the kitchen and what we presume is a young woman in the kitchen, too." The agent saw a sparkle of interest in the doctor's eyes now. "It is like a regular Sunday morning of an American family"He said, as he opened the door. "Only, this one smells pretty bad."

The strong scent of decomposing bodies, hit them as they stepped into the perceivably foul smelling house together. It would have been normal for Brennan to find that smell, but this time there was something different about it. It was hot. Really hot.

"What's with the heating system?" Said Brennan. She knew corpses would have decomposed quicker, thus making the postmortem intervals more difficult to establish and only that fact, gave the case a level of difficulty she enjoyed quietly.

Everything was perfectly arranged, which to the forensic anthropologist indicated they had been killed somewhere else, and that the heated temperature presented in this scenario were only a matter of accelerating the process of decomposition. Brennan had no time to waste with information that needed to be recorded by the FBI, so she went and examined the first rotting corpse from the living room. The room was decorated in an oriental fashion. Lots of lamps and colors such as green and orange, but still fresh and relaxing in style.

"What happened to his head?" asked the disgusted FBI agent at the sight of the exposed skull of the victim. Apparently, he hadn't been to many crime scenes before. "And where's his hair?"

"Objectively, I'd say he had no hair. Most likely the heating system cause the most exposed area of the body, such as the top of his head, to decompose first"

She said, watching the young agent get queasy. "And you're right, it's a male"

She said while she touched the melting face of the victim. "Cranial sutures indicate an age of about 40 to 50 years old". She ran her fingers across the man's forehead. "Bullet entry in the frontal bone"

As she pushed the body to her, so she could see the back of the victim's head, she kept giving details. "Directionality shows this it was shot obliquely from above, and leaving an exit wound on the base of the skull"She put the body back against its chair and said "This is definitely murder"

Brennan spent about an hour determining the sex and race of the victims and sharing the details with the FBI. "They seem to be all part of the same family, but I'll need to do some tests before confirming it." She said as she removed her gloves ready to get back to the lab.

As she looked around, they FBI team scoped the area taking more pictures and making sure everything had been checked, but she found something interesting. In a far corner of the living room, there was a portrait hanging of an Asian family of three children and two adults who could easily be the kid's parents. She looked especially at the older male figure of it. He was probably in his 30s.

"Those people are definitely not the murder victims." Said Brennan pointing to the portrait. "The interorbital breadth is intermediate in skulls of Asian ancestry, just like in the picture" Agent Hyson decided not to interrupt the Doctor's moment and listened as he took notes he did not understood. "The victim's eyes are closer together than those of the people in the portrait. Our victims are Caucasian, not Asian. This is not their home." And now, the case became much more interesting to one forensic anthropologist.

"Then who are these people?"

Brennan asked the agents to take everything to the Jeffersonian, where the team would be expecting the victims, and she headed to her car, to get Booth. He would need to participate of this one, whether he liked it or not.

Feel free to review and thank you for reading! I'll keep going if you liked this!