Sorry this hasn't been updated in a while! I am moved into my apartment for the year, so expect fairly regular updates now! :)
For those of you who want to see Shamy in this fic…it will be here, maybe sooner than it would in the show, but not quite yet.
Oh, and yeah, the whole not owning anything thing is still a thing.
"Penny," Leonard said, "this is Raj Koothrapali."
"Oh," Penny said, giving him a little wave. "Do you work with Leonard and Sheldon?" Leonard wondered how she'd guessed that they did all in fact work together.
Raj took a few steps back.
Penny glanced uneasily at Leonard. "I'm sorry," she said. "Do…do you speak English?"
"Oh, he speaks English," Howard said, coming over from the fridge. "He just can't speak to women."
"Really!" Penny said, fascinated by the concept. "Why?"
Howard looked as if the answer was obvious. "He's kind of a nerd."
Penny nodded, looking slightly uncomfortable. "Ah."
"Do you want to sit down?" Leonard asked, gesturing to the couch.
"Oh, yes, thank you," Penny said.
"Little tip," Leonard whispered. "Don't sit on the left end of the couch."
Penny looked confused. "Why?"
"That's where Sheldon sits," Howard and Leonard said together. Raj nodded in agreement.
"Someday, when you're feeling really bored, ask him to explain why," Leonard told her.
Penny gave a small laugh. "Okay." She sat down in the white chair. Leonard dragged up a chair from the kitchen area and sat next to her. Howard passed out the food.
"So," Leonard said, as Sheldon came back into the room, "tell us about you, Penny."
"Oh," Penny put her food down. "Okay, well, this might be a little TMI, but I'm a Saggitarius."
Leonard furrowed his brow. "What's TMI?"
"Good!" Penny said, smiling as if they'd shared a joke.
"I believe he's seriously asking what TMI stands for," Sheldon said. "We are not familiar with urban slang, and I doubt you are referring to the Tauber Manufacturing Institute, Three Mile Island, or the Episcopal School of Texas, formerly the Texas Military Institute, or the TMI."
Penny stared at him. "Um…" She cocked her head. "TMI stands for 'too much information'."
Raj whispered something into Howard's ear. "If you knew that, then get over yourself and say so!" he snapped.
"So, Saggitarius," Leonard said.
"Well, you know, that's probably way more than you need to know," she said.
"Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the Sun's apparent position relevant to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality," Sheldon said.
There was an awkward silence. Leonard cleared his throat. "I would have thought you were a water sign."
Penny looked both incredulous and pleased. "I get that a lot!"
Leonard hoped his relief at saying the right thing by complete chance wasn't evident on his face.
"So, what do you guys do for fun around here?" she asked.
"You know," Leonard said, "we're scientists, so we're pretty busy, but we do enjoy movies, Chinese food…"
"Klingon Boggle, Traitors, Mystic Warlords of Ka-a," Sheldon rattled off.
Penny blinked, and then looked at Leonard. "Klingon Boggle?"
"Yeah," he said. "It's just like regular Boggle, but in Klingon."
She stared. "And…and Traitors?"
"A game I invented," Sheldon said. "You name three traitors, and the other person has to guess which one was the biggest offender. Like say, Darth Vader, Judas, or Rupert Murdoch."
Penny frowned. "Rupert Murdoch?"
"He owns FOX, and they cancelled Firefly," Leonard explained.
"So I take it he and Darth Vader are tied for second?" Penny asked.
Sheldon looked confused. "Judas betrayed one person. Darth Vader destroyed the Jedi Order, inadvertently killed his wife, and tried to kill his best friend with his own blade. Rupert Murdoch has provided much of the data that can be used to analyze how long people can hold a grudge when someone has attached them to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helicly around an axis."
Penny blinked. "I see." She turned and looked at Leonard, who mouthed he's crazy and bugged his eyes out. She giggled in spite of herself.
The rest of the meal continued with minimal conversation, but Penny smiled at Leonard as she stood up after finishing. "This was fun, but I gotta get back. Unpacking, you know." She cleared her throat. "Thanks for explaining those games to me, Sheldon…they were very interesting. Though I think I'm glad I didn't ask about Mystic Warlords of Ka."
"It's Ka-a." Howard corrected her as she walked to the door.
She turned. "Buh-eye."
"Wait, wait!" Leonard said. He'd stood up when Penny did, and now took a step toward the door. "Did you want to hang out…with us, all of us, not just me, all of us…sometime again?"
Penny looked as if she was thinking. "I'm having a Halloween party on Friday, just some friends of mine from work. If you wanted to come. All of you," she clarified.
"We'd love that!" Leonard said, nodding. "Right, guys?"
"Oh yeah, totally, we'll come, uh-huh," they all blurted, sounding as if they'd been put on the spot.
"Alright," Raj said, nodding once the door was shut. "She seems pretty cool."
"Right?" Leonard said, grinning.
"I don't like her," Sheldon said. "She didn't know who Rupert Murdoch is."
"That's not a Cardinal Sin," Leonard said.
"Well, I suppose if you're willing to accept her, then it's fine that she isn't aware of the biggest betrayal in television history."
"I think you're lucky that TiMERs exist," Howard said. "There is no way in the entire universe that she would end up with you without them."
"Excuse me," Leonard said, "TiMERs do not tell you something that you wouldn't end up figuring out anyway. It's a confirmation of what we'd find anyway, we just know in advance."
"I'm with Wolowitz on this one," Sheldon said. "These devices are hokum."
Howard and Raj glanced at each other. "Alright," the former said, smiling slowly. "Prove it."
Sheldon looked confused. "I don't follow."
"Get a TiMER. Meet who it says is your soulmate. And don't fall in love with her."
Sheldon looked as if he was considering the suggestion. Then he gave a snort. "I know you only have a master's degree- " Howard rolled his eyes " – so I'm going to make my answer is simplistic as possible. No."
Raj shook his head. "Don't worry, Sheldon. We'll know for sure if they work if Leonard makes it with that pretty girl across the hall."
"Of course we're going to make it!" Leonard said. "We're going to fall passionately in love, get married, and spend the rest of our lives together. Because TiMERs work."
"Well, there is one big question," Howard said. "People meet, their TiMERs go off, and they know they're supposed to be together, and so most of them don't fight it. The controversy over the TiMERs is, are people making them a self-fulfilling prophecy? And if so, what will happen if someone actively works against having a relationship with the person their TiMER went off for, because they're afraid?"
