A/N: This chapter had to be done... also, the Fringe part hasn't been beta'd, but I couldn't wait to update any longer.

Sadly, I don't own Fringe or the Big Bang Theory, and I honestly wouldn't know what to do with myself if I did.

Olivia and Astrid were already in the lab when Peter and Walter arrived with breakfast.

"We're here!" Peter called, unpacking his and Olivia's coffee. "You're here awfully early…" He gave her the coffee how she liked it – black. He wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Yeah, I couldn't sleep, so I decided to go ahead and finish up the paperwork from our last case."

Peter feigned a grimace. "Yeah, that was a creepy one." These crazy happenings were beginning to become the norm for him, but he kept up thee rituals of bewilderment anyway, in attempt to prolong the existence of his humanity.

"They always are…" They shared a knowing - if slightly gloomy - smile. From across the laboratory, Walter's strange request rang out.

"Astro, do we have any gelatin?"

"No, Walter, why would we need gelatin?"

"To make pudding, of course! I also need bacon…" Walter continued his list, but his voice declined to a murmur.

"Ah, the bacon-flavored pudding, again." Immediately after speaking, Peter realized that Walter's first reference to the concoction had been in the presence of Fauxlivia and regretted speaking at all. The simultaneous ringing of their cell phones rescued him form the awkward situation.

"Dunham"

"Peter Bishop"

"Agent Farnsworth"

"A new case?"

"Pasadena?"

"On the way…" They ended their respective calls and Astrid left to draw Walter from his thoughts on low-calorie, meat-flavored deserts.

"Looks like we get a free trip to California." Peter announced, his signature smirk lit his face and he noticed Olivia grinning, too. He was glad they'd become friendly with one another again, his life had become a guilt-ridden hell when she was avoiding him.

When the Fringe team arrived on the scene, the Officer in Charge met them at the door of the apartment building.

"Is that a drug team?" Walter asked her, looking slightly alarmed.

"Um, yes. Based on the call to the authorities, we first assumed it was merely a stoned teenager, and deployed the drug squad."

"Oh, how disappointing…"

Olivia cleared her throat; she didn't need her scientist getting himself arrested. "Yes, well, can you point us to the site of the incident?"

"Right this way." She led them inside and indicated the stairwell. "The elevator's Out-of-Order. Its apartment 4A."

"You've got to be kidding me." Astrid complained. Peter nodded his agreement as the group began to climb the steps.

When they had reached the second landing, Peter struck up a conversation. "Did Broyles tell you what we're here to see?"

"No, just that it was urgent. I think its safe to assume it has something to do with the Other Side." That dreadful place, they were almost always behind the Fringe Events.

"Mhmm…" Peter's reply was minimal, but she wasn't surprised that he didn't want to get involved in a conversation about them. She didn't blame Peter for being from there, he couldn't help that. She blamed him for not seeing her for who she was: for not recognizing that Fauxlivia wasn't the same as her.

"Do you feel that buzzing?" Olivia asked as they approached the third floor. She could feel it. The floor shook slightly, and there was a ringing in her ears. It reminded her of how she'd felt before Walternate had crossed over to their side on the bridge. That was the beginning of this mess.

Her coworkers shook their heads then, but by the time they'd reached the fourth floor, it was impossible to deny. Peter shook his head -to clear his ears, or out of remembrance of the same incident?- and entered 4A in the lead. He halted abruptly as soon as he was inside.

Four men, perhaps a little younger than Peter and her, and all quite geeky looking, to be blunt, stood behind the island in the kitchenette on the far side of the room. A pretty, blonde girl stood there with them as well as a police officer who seemed extremely nervous. Peter wasn't staring at the people, though, although she was sure the frightened police officer would've made him smirk. Olivia began to smile herself, but then remembered the betrayal - his overlooking her absence and replacement.

Instead of the people, his gaze was focused on a large rectangular frame, about the dimensions of a doorframe cut in half horizontally, sitting on the coffee table. Inside the frame a swirling black wormhole extended into oblivion. Not uppercase Oblivion, nothing that dire - just oblivion. "This is definitely what Broyles called us in for; it's right up our alley..."

"What do you mean 'right up your alley'?" A lanky young man with a disproportionately large head piped up from behind the counter. "This work is completely original! It was strictly theoretical until mere hours ago!"

Peter's knowing grin preceded his snide comment. "Sure it was…"

"This closely resembles my device from umm…" Walter glanced back at Peter, "The 1980's."

"What do you mean 'your device'?" Lanky-Boy was growing increasingly aggravated. "This is my-" One of his friends, a shorter man with thick, black-framed glasses and a greenish hoodie, elbowed him. "I mean our work!"

"Forget your pride, Sheldon!" This was a third guy. He had a bowl-cut and prominent nose. The fluorescent colors of his shirt were obnoxious, but not nearly as awful as his heinously tight skinny jeans of a matching shade, revealed as he stepped from behind the counter. "The government has just admitted to hiding technology from civilians!"

"Well, that's hardly anything new…" Walter commented loudly, although it appeared he had intended discretion.

"Sorry, man" Peter added. "We don't work for the government." He pulled out the name badge he used to get into the FBI building. "Civilian consultant."

Olivia changed the subject before anything could get worse. It seemed she was doing a lot of that today. "Listen, we need to get statements from all of you. We have to determine what this is and what kind of damage this device has caused or could cause in the future. So if you five could come out into the hallway- " the lanky one, Sheldon, seemed about to interrupt again, but Olivia silenced him. " Dr. Bishop and Agent Farnsworth" she indicated the two, "are perfectly competent to manage your machine… device." This doorframe wasn't the Machine. That thing was set up in Massive Dynamic. Somehow, she and Peter were both connected to it. As Olivia led the five people from the room, Walter's latest demand reverberated in her ears and brightened her mood slightly.

"Asterisk, do you think those young people have any peppermint sticks available?"

Olivia didn't know exactly when she started accepting Peter into all of her interrogations, but he obviously enjoyed it. It was probably just the change of pace from being the one interrogated to the one interrogating. He'd also picked up some techniques that were, to say the least, quite unique.

"OK, we'll start with introductions." Olivia began. Sheldon stepped forward first. Olivia caught Peter and a couple of Sheldon's friends rolling their eyes.

"I am Dr. Sheldon Cooper, B.S., M.S., M.A., Ph.D., Sc.D., theoretical physicist."

"Ohh-kay… Umm…" Unsure of how to respond to Dr. Cooper, she just pointed to the next fellow in the row, the one with the glasses.

"Dr. Leonard Hofstadter… I'm an experimental physicist."

She nodded and was about to look to the next man along the row, Rainbow Man, when he suddenly shouted, "I'm ain't tellin' the Feds nothin'!" He crossed his arms over his chest, supposedly on an attempt to look tough or cool. Dr. Hofstader sighed and introduced the remaining two men.

"That's Howard Wolowitz. He's an engineer. And-" he pointed to a slightly stocky Indian man who had been completely silent the entire time, "That's Dr. Rajesh Koothrappali, astrophysicist. We all work at Caltech. The apartment belongs to Sheldon and me." Olivia nodded her thanks and looked to the blonde woman who stood behind the group.

"Oh, I'm Penny. I'm an actress currently waiting at the Cheesecake Factory and I live across the hall in 4B. I'm the one who called the police."

"OK, good… Well I'm Special Agent Olivia Dunham, and this is Peter Bishop. He and his father, Dr. Walter Bishop, are civilian consultants with the FBI. The other woman is Junior Agent Astrid Farnsworth. We're here to investigate your… device and determine its safety. We would appreciate your cooperation."

"Excuse me, but…" It was Dr. Cooper, again. "Is this the same Walter Bishop who was institutionalized in the nineties for manslaughter, deemed unfit for trial?" Peter arched his eyebrow and shifted his weight. Olivia knew he had taken plenty of grief about that in his teen years.

"Yes, but-"

"You sent him to investigate my work? Surely even Wolowitz would be more competent than he would, and he doesn't even have a doctorate!"

"Excuse me, but I have a Master's Degree in enginee-"

"Shut-up, Howard!"

"You do realize you're talking about my father – in front of me…" Peter leaned forward while talking, leading the others to take a monumental step back.

"Oh my gosh, he's gonna kill us!" Leonard exclaimed. All four men flinched as Peter gesticulated.

"OKAY, OKAY, OKAY!" Penny was intervening. She held her hands in the air and moved in front of her neighbors. "Their easily intimidated, and they bruise easily!" the group were suddenly interrupted by a siren from the apartment.

"I knew it! We're all going to die in a terrible fire!" Sheldon had regained his composure and turned to run down the stairs when Leonard grabbed his arm.

"That's not the fire alarm, it's that insane trap you set in the pantry you hid your Flash comic in!"

Astrid chose that moment to stick her head out the door. "Umm, guys? Walter's been snared…"

A/N: Thanks to WeBuiltThePyramids for Betaing for Big Bang Theory

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