4

Another day, another string of the exact variation of the same events from the day before, and Sheldon rose from bed at his usual time ready to solve the mysteries of the universe through his position at the California Institute of Technology. A moment in the bathroom and he followed his same unerring routine that he performed every morning. As this was Friday, he'd be having cereal. Walking through the apartment in his bathrobe, he tightened it a bit and turned into the kitchen, reaching above the refrigerator for a choice of cereal.

"Hello…" A little girl sitting up there looked back at him from over the boxes.

"Hello…" Sheldon answered back, took a bowl from the cabinet and motioned to the counter to make his cereal. The slight disturbance in his morning routine took a few seconds to register and he turned back around to the refrigerator. He had seen a little girl up there!

"Where did you come from?"

"The stork brought me." The girl announced matter-of-factly.

"Don't give me that." Sheldon confronted her. "I didn't accept that answer when I was five-year-old from my mother, and I'm not going to accept it now. How did you get into this apartment?"

"Oh, there are ways…." The sullen little brunette responded bored and distracted.

"Oh, well…" Sheldon stepped back from her. "We're going to see about that. Leonard!" He turned from her and headed down the hall. Once he was out of eye sight, the pixie with the long brown hair atop the refrigerator slipped down off and on to the counter, dropping from there to the floor, opening the cabinet under the sink, slipping inside and closing the door.

"Leonard!" Sheldon marched into Leonard's room where he was trying to sleep in his bed. "What's that little girl doing in this apartment?"

"What little girl?" Leonard's voice came through his pillow and one blanket.

"The one on the refrigerator."

Groaning tiredly, Leonard slowly reached for his glasses, pulled them on and looked up to Sheldon.

"Sheldon," He spoke still half asleep. "Isn't it early to make me want to kill you?"

"Don't explain it to me, explain it to her." Sheldon stood on his robe over Leonard's bed. "She's about seven-years-old, brown eyes, brown hair, dressed in this short black dress and very disrespectful!"

"Yeah, that sounds a little girl you've run into." Leonard roused slowly and tiredly, and with a big yawn, reached for his robe and pulled it around his body once he was out of bed. With Sheldon prodding him to move faster, he wandered into the apartment and looked around. There was no little girl.

"Where'd she go?" Leonard looked around. "Do you still see her?"

"Well, of course, I can't see her; she's not invisible!" Sheldon looked for her through the kitchen and the living room. "Where are you? Little girl? Olly-olly-oxsen-free…" He even used a forgotten children's rhyme to try and summon her. He gazed around the room then stopped near the sofa. "I think she went back out."

Scowling skeptically and cynically, Leonard moved over to check their door. It was still locked.

"Wow, she even locked the door behind her." He responded sarcastically.

"Did you lend a copy of our key out?" Not understanding the sarcasm, Sheldon asked the obvious, but Leonard just ambled the walk of the rudely awakened down the hall to the bathroom.

"Yeah, this is a guy who should be going into space." He mumbled. Their bathroom had a clouded plate glass door, but he now wished it was not so opaque. Upon opening the door, he looked over to the toilet and saw a brunette pixie of a little girl with a round face, two cherubic brown eyes and waves of long brown locks sitting on it with her panties down around her thin white legs in front of her.

"Just a minute…" She told Leonard, and he closed the door.

What the hell was that?

Where did these kids come from? He tried to rationalize it a bit more. Wondering about it, he wondered if Sheldon had been right all along. Debating if he should look again, he wandered out to the outer apartment again. After looking around the kitchen and the apartment, Sheldon had made his cereal and was getting ready to eat his breakfast. He looked up to Leonard at the end of the hall.

"This little girl…" Leonard scowled confusingly. "Was she about yay-tall with dark hair and a round face?"

"Taller."

"I think she's in the bathroom."

"You gave two of our keys out to little girls?"

"No…" Leonard gestured to him to come see, and Sheldon begrudgingly stopped eating his Rice Chex to come confront this girl. They advanced on the bathroom, opened it and looked inside. It was empty.

"Where is she?" Sheldon asked. Leonard checked the shower. It was also empty. "Leonard, there had better not be a little girl in my room when I go in there to get ready for work." He shook his finger at Leonard.

"Oh, come on!" Leonard took offense. "Sheldon, you don't think this could be connected to those weirdoes on the fifth floor?"

"I wouldn't put it past them." Sheldon hurried to get to his cereal before it got limp and soggy, but as he turned, he heard the sounds of thunder. It didn't come from outside the building. It more or less came from inside the building. It was the sound of the air conditioning vents bending and bouncing back into place as something passed through them.

"Oh my god, they're in the duct work!" Leonard realized how they got in.

"Honestly, Leonard, what the hell is wrong with these people?"

"I don't know… Just go eat your cereal…" Leonard made a look around the bathroom one more time before using the toilet. Mentally planning to talk to Jesse about his daughters getting into their place, he showered and shaved and dressed before getting his breakfast. Hoping that was it on the weird stuff in the building for today, he was eating his own bowl of cereal for breakfast when he heard the sound of rattling out in the hallway landing. It sounded like a large dog was outside his door.

"Spot…Come on, Spottie! Come to din-din…" Lizzie's voice called from upstairs.

Leonard scrambled to keep from spilling his cereal on the floor after the loud roar that had followed. He had never heard anything like that ever before! Lasting several seconds with an ever-lasting echo effect trailing off, it sounded reptilian with the accompanying patter of feet heading up the stairs. The closest thing he could describe it as was the sound of the tyrannosaurus rex from the movie, "Jurassic Park." Adjusting his backpack with his notes, Sheldon just paused annoyingly surprised and exhaled exasperatedly. Leonard quickly put his bowl in the sink and raced to get a look at in the hall, just in time to see around three feet of dark greenish mottled tail heading up the stairs and vanishing up top. Behind him, Penny opened up her door wearing her orange and white waitress uniform for the Cheesecake Factory.

"What the hell was that?" She asked both stunned and scared to death.

"Looked like a cross between a komodo dragon and a stegosaurus…." He answered.

"Leonard," Sheldon came out of the apartment ready to leave for the university. "You have got to go up there and talk to those people. We can't have little girls in the vents, dinosaurs in the stairway and trains crashing overhead."

"Me?" Leonard reacted annoyed. "Why can't you talk to them? You're the one around here who likes complaining."

"I can't…" Sheldon reacted submissive. "They scare me."

"Yeah, Leonard, you have to do this." Penny had retrieved her purse and was getting ready to leave herself. "Last night, I smelled something they were barbecuing on the roof called Ostrich Ka-Bobs, and, what scares me is, they started smelling good!" She looked scared. Leonard had stepped inside to get his coat and lock the apartment behind Sheldon.

"I'll do it…" He gave in.

"Great!" She grinned toward him. "Can you drive me to work?" She asked.

"No." Sheldon answered.

"Sure." Leonard had the final say; it was his car. They started down the steps to the third floor, but it started happening again. They heard a distant voice singing down stairs coming up toward them they had never heard before. Sheldon groaned annoyingly, and Leonard looked to Penny for answers. This person was coming closer. When they reached the third floor, they were right above the voice, and while heading down to the second, they were right on her.

"…Champagne kisses, living in your lap of luxury…" Their female vocalist was exceptionally beautiful with jet black hair, fair alabaster skin and big round blue eyes wearing tight blue jeans with alligator-skin boots and a small top that did nothing but focus attention to her proud bosom leading her up the stairs. Dragging a leather jacket behind her, she looked incredibly like singer Katy Perry, and upon seeing her, Penny dropped her jaw in shock believing she was the mega-million dollar entertainer in the building. Leonard immediately started mentally undressing her curves, but Sheldon remained asexual and rolled his eyes upon passing her. Penny dropped her jaw in shock as Katy came close to Leonard.

"Hey there!" She grinned and blew a kiss at Leonard from her ruby red lips. Penny was in awe. Sheldon reacted confused and unsure how to react to an oversexed fair-skinned brunette with jet-black hair and blue eyes coming up their stairs, flirting with Leonard and then heading onward to the upstairs.

"Was that Katy Perry?" Penny looked back.

"Who?" Leonard was not up on anyone who was not part of the comic book, science fiction or fantasy universes.

"Katy Perry?" Penny tried to remind Leonard. He just remained oblivious. "She's like a major pop singer!" Penny wanted to shake him. "Okay, she's like… Wonder Woman in my universe!"

"Oh, Katy Perry!" He had heard her music back when he was dating Penny. "So, her being here… that's unusual, right?"

"Uh…Yeah!"

"What would someone that famous be doing in our building?" Sheldon wondered.

"I've got to get her autograph!" Penny started up after her.

"You'll be late for work." Without Katy every appearing on "Star Trek" or "Stargate," Leonard still did not get how popular the singer was.

"Crap and a half!" Penny came back down to join them for her ride to work. Grabbing the front seat of Leonard's car before Sheldon, she debated with the guys why a major entertainer would be in their building, and gradually began to postulate her being linked to the Vannacutts on the fifth floor. That was another reason for Leonard to talk to Jesse after work about the kids and the noises. He'd be able to ask Jesse about his connection to the singer, but five hours later, all of that was far from his mind in the university physics lab.

"Leonard Hofstadter?" Someone visited him during his research.

"Yes…" Leonard looked up to his guest.

"John Doggett, Federal agent…" He flashed his FBI badge. "I'm here to ask you a few questions about Dr. Sheldon Cooper. You got a couple of hours?"

"Oh, it shouldn't take…" Leonard paused to turn off his argon laser. "Uh, actually it might…."