It had been years since you’d last seen Barbara. Back then, the two of you were in dusty excavation sites, the sun beating down on tan canvas tents, competing for the same relics, the same grants, the same prestige. She was quick with a smirk, quicker with a trowel, and you’d hated how easily she could charm a sponsor after weeks of your own careful digging. That was before the transformation. Before the legend of the Cheetah began to stalk headlines instead of scholarly journals.

You had heard whispers — sightings, rumors — but nothing prepared you for finding her in the flesh, fur, and fury, vaulting through the museum skylight with an artifact under her arm. The heist had gone wrong almost instantly: security alarms, armed guards, and the sudden, ugly truth that neither of you had the upper hand anymore.

Now you leap across a narrow gap between rooftops, boots slapping against the concrete as you land. Behind you, she lands lighter, more graceful, tail lashing for balance.

“Still slow,” she calls, voice dripping with the same playful cruelty she’d used when you fumbled a fossil in front of the department chair years ago.

“Still stealing,” you shoot back, forcing air into your lungs.

The artifact — an obsidian idol etched in a language both of you once stayed up nights trying to decipher — is no longer in her grasp. It had been knocked loose in the scramble, sliding across the roof tiles until it vanished into the shadows below. That’s the problem: neither of you have it now, and the guards are coming fast.

You don’t slow until you reach the edge of a building, the city yawning open beneath you in a patchwork of streetlights and shadow. The sound of pursuit isn’t just behind you — it’s closing in from both sides. Her ears flick toward the noise. You see the moment she weighs her options: keep running alone, or…

Her gaze fixes on you, sharp as the claws curled at her side. “We’re not getting out of here in one piece unless we work together,” she says.

It’s absurd — absurd that she’s offering, absurd that you’re considering it. The two of you, side by side again, not as rival scholars but something sharper, stranger.

“You trust me?” you ask.

She bares her teeth in a grin that’s more predator than friend. “Not a chance. But I know you hate losing.”

The next moments blur into muscle memory. You’re moving together — you, vaulting low to sweep a guard’s legs out; her, springing high to knock another flat. There’s no time for words, only instinct, only the heat of shared danger pushing you through the maze of rooftops. When you reach a low awning over an alley, you drop first, crouching in the shadows. She lands beside you without sound.

The alarms fade behind you, swallowed by the city’s constant hum. For a long moment, you just breathe — you, gasping; her, steady.

“Still think you’re faster,” she says, brushing a loose strand of fur from her face.