Chapter 1: Petty Action, Horrific Consequences

Everyone said that he was one lab accident away from being a super villain. They would never know how right they were about that. They were unsuspecting and unprepared for how he turned out after that fateful day. He looked down at the woman that was lying in the hospital bed. He kissed her brow as the heartbeat monitor gave off the rhythmic beat that told him that she was still alive. His large hand smoothed her gold locks off her head. He inwardly flinched when he saw the stitches on her forehead, near her temple. His hands dropped back down to his sides before taking their traditional place behind his back.

'Why? Why of all days did you have to visit?' He asked her in his head. He closed his eyes, his eidetic memory replaying everything that happened that fateful day over and over again before he snapped his eyes open once more. He had made so many alterations in his life to accommodate her and yet here she laid, in a coma.

'All because of them' His mind hissed in rage as his hands clenched into fists.

Four Days Prior:

"I am telling you that the adjustments I made are perfectly fine. All it will do it snap a bit and stop, nothing more. It will just make sure he won't use it for a while. I promise Leonard, I know what I am doing. I am an Engineer" Howard said to his friend as he checked the machine once more. He did some non-damaging tweaks to the machine so that it would scare Sheldon but not cause any damage to their lanky friend or the million dollar machine. Leonard looked a little skeptical for a moment but if it kept Sheldon out of his way for a while, he would do it.

"Okay…come on, lets get out of here. Sheldon will be here any moment" Leonard said as he pushed his glasses up his nose and shifted his messenger bag on his back. They were heading down the hall when Sheldon turned the corner.

"Oh, hello there Comrades, where are you two coming from?" Sheldon inquired, more to fulfill social obligations than anything else.

"Oh well…we were just going to the lab, but then we remember it is your time to~" Howard started before he was interrupted.

"Hey MoonPie! I came to see what you were working on. Plus, I wanted to tell you all about that amazing acting job I got on that Sy-Fy TV series~!" Penny said as she came up behind the tall man. Sheldon rolled his eyes and shot Penny an exasperated look. Leonard muttered something before leaving, clearly still uncomfortable being in Penny presence since their break up. Howard followed quickly, pausing only to give Penny a leer.

"What's with them?" She said as the two seemed to tuck tails and run away. She could kind of understand Leonard, but Howard seemed a little more

"One, don't call me MoonPie. Two, probably Leonard is missing the coitus you two had during your disaster of a relationship." Sheldon said as he walked into the lab. He set his bag down and went over to inspect his work area. Once finding nothing re-missed, he began to set up the machine. He set the machine to slowly warm up to ensure that there were no issues with the start up procedure. It effortlessly reach full capacity. The turbine spun at full speed. Sheldon turned around to see Penny sitting on a stool watching him with curious eyes. He shrugged and flipped the switch of the laser part of the machine. The laser moved and hit the quartz triangle. He angled the quartz, sending the high powered laser at the material he was testing.

"Whatcha doing MoonPie?"

"I am testing the properti~." A strange noise caused him to turn around, he noticed that the turbine was shifting on it's axis just a bit, which caused the laser's direction to begun to fluctuate. Fear gripped him as he watched the laser bounce up and down the spans of the quartz, still within safe parameters. His mind began to quickly calculate how long it would take before the off axis turbine to send the laser outside the limits. Nausea gripped him when the results of those calculation came to the forefront of her mind. He raced to turn the machine off before it got to that state. But the emergency switch wasn't working.

Now the situation went from bad to worse in a few seconds as the results of his calculation came to life. The bouncing laser bounced up just enough to hit the highly flammable bottles of material. Instantly they exploded as the turbine finally spun out of control. Everything was either bursting into flames, exploding or hitting the floor. The runaway laser was cutting through materials, burning into the walls and cutting into shelves. He turned and yanked Penny off her stool, since she was stuck in shock. They were almost to the door when the machine finally fell off the table. The laser shot near their arms, burning their arms before hitting the ceiling fans. The roof, now unstable collapsed. Sheldon remembered seeing a piece of it hit Penny's head before he fell on top of her and darkness consumed his vision.

He awoke a day later to find himself in the hospital. His arm was heavily bandaged to protect the 3rd degree burn that was there. The rest of his body was littered with bruises, scratches, and stitches. But over all no broken bones, no memory lose, and no sense of what the hell had happened. He looked over to find his mother there, praying in her chair.

"Mom…"

"Oh Shelly~! The Lord has answered my prayers, your awake and well~! Oh Blessed lord, I thought I would lose you. How are you? Do you remember what happened?"

"I am not suffering from any form of memory lose. How is Penny?" He asked, wanting to know how she faired after all of this. He would, in due time, also want to know how this came to be. He watched as his mother's face fell. His heart began to race as fear gripped him. Something was clearly wrong.

"Shelly…Dear now don't get worked up….but dear she is in a coma. She got hit on the head by a piece of the ceiling." His face must have shown his distress because his mother was soon trying to placate him.

"The doctors are hopeful though. That she'll make a full recovery." His mother patted his hand, as if that would make it alright.

"H-how?" He asked, knowing very well how she had ended up in that state, but he more meant how could this had happened to them. Obviously his mother understood what he meant from the look of disgust and rage on her face.

"Well your Friends, Howard and Leonard thought it would be a good idea to change something in that machine. Turns out for all their smarts they didn't know what they were really doing with such a complex machine. Seems that whatever they did caused everything to collapse in that thing." His mother said in a grave tone. Sheldon felt something grip him.

"Leonard and Howard….are the reason why…..Penny and I are…..in the hospital…the reason why Penny may very well die?" His voice, which normally would have gone more shrill with his distress, seemed to drop by an octave with each word he spoke. His blue eyes were almost black with hatred at that point.

"No dear, they didn't mean to cause so much damage. The police already spoke with them. While they did tamper with the machine, there is no way to prove that what they did actually caused the accident."

"SO THEY GET TO WALK FREE~!" Some how he found the strength to get out of bed. He stared at his mom with a murderous gaze.

"Now Shelly, you calm down, you hear? They got a serious fine and the university has suspended them." His mother snapped, not wanting her little Shelly to work himself up and re-injure himself somehow.

"Penny is in a COMA mother, one she may not wake from and you think that is ENOUGH punishment for their transgressions?" He said darkly. His mother was taken back by his demeanor. Never before had she seen him act this way, not even when the neighbor kids beat him up. She gathered herself, focusing on him for now.

"It is the Lord's job to deal out punishments Shelly, not humans. They will get their dues in Heaven." His mother stood and pulled him back to bed. He laid down as his mother wanted, allowed the doctors to look him over. All the while the images of Penny just before the accident as well as during played across his mind over and over again. Her fear and her broken form were all he knew in those moments. Soon they were replaced by all the working knowledge of the universe and he planned to use it for a very different purpose than before. The Nobel Prize could wait. Revenge could not. Not while Penny was still lying in some bed in this hospital hanging on for dear life. No, they would feel the pain and fear they inflicted up Penny and himself.

Sheldon knew his life was going to have to take a different path for a while, but so long as there was hope that Penny came out of this, it would not be a permanent change. He let himself fall asleep, knowing the next couple of days would be tireless, for he would have to find a new residence. Not really for him to live in, but more for a place to work on his revenge without tipping off Leonard. That way when he said he was going out to do some work, it wouldn't be lying. They would never see it coming. They would think that a simple apology would suffice, but they would be so very wrong.

A/N:Edited. This will be my last personal pass at this chapter. So, unless you plan on being my beta, please refrain from commenting on grammar issues on this chapter. Thank you.