A/N: Sent D^2 home but kept my laptop. Now hometime is Thu or Fri.

Reparata

Chapter 7

John Connor looked at the pretty blonde who moments before had been crying into his mother's shoulder and then glanced at Derek Reese. The look on Reese's face wasn't one he'd ever seen before except sometimes when he caught him looking at his mom when he thought no one was looking.

"Where's Cameron?" First things first: Prioritize responses given your understanding of the situation. His mother had drilled those basics into his head in some manner, shape, or form since he could remember.

"She's outside. We have a visitor. They're talking. At least that was her intention, to get him to talk, open up, answer some basic questions, I guess, and determine his intentions."

John's mind jumped to a conclusion: stranger, basic questions, intruder, danger. He jacked a round into his Sig Sauer and charged out the back door and onto the verandah.

"Step away from her and let me see your hands!" 'If this is the best 'terminator' infiltrator Sky Net can come up with, maybe things are looking up in the future.'

Sheldon Cooper was nobody's fool but he was also a newly minted fatalist. He wasn't going to die today no matter what happened and that made him feel invulnerable.

He stood between Cameron and the man holding the pistol and put his hands on his hips and gave him his best glare. He had long ago given up trying to influence people through mind control. He just didn't seem to be able to connect with the lower life forms on a psychic level but he'd mastered the glare and used it effectively.

"Young man, you've interrupted a personal conversation. If I wished to 'step away' from this young lady I would. However, I don't. Now be a lamb and go back inside. I believe it's almost time for Power Rangers and you know you don't want to miss the beginning."

Cameron swallowed a laugh and then schooled her features so that John couldn't see her laughing at the look on his face. People rarely got over on John Connor but the Doc did and apparently it wasn't limited to the future.

He turned his back on the gunman and said to Cameron, "I brought a prototype of what I modestly call the 'Cooper Pulse Pistol' for you to evaluate and perhaps find a way to mass produce and cache for the Resistance to find and utilize Up Time. If the younger version of the General is willing, I can obtain the raw materials and components locally that are no longer available in the future. Manpower would be your problem."

"That's probably up to Sarah, not John. Sarah and Derek." She wondered if Sheldon knew that the 'young man' he'd dismissed was John Connor and if he did, would he care?

"Omaha? My God, what are you doing here?" Derek was stunned at how pretty she looked when she wasn't filthy or drunk or both.

"Why does everyone keep calling me 'Omaha'? I'm Penny Ford. I live at 2311 Los Robles in Pasadena and I think I'm losing my mind. This – this is too much for me to handle. First Sheldon hops into and out of some blue thingy – "

"It's called a vortex. Doc's here? Cool. Where is the S.O.B.? I hope he brought down the prototype. Sarah, we need to talk, all of us. We found something that has to be taken care of and it can't wait too damned long."

He smiled at Penny again and then walked out onto the verandah. He wanted to be there when John got a look at the Cooper Pulse Pistol. They could demonstrate it on the Tin Miss but he figured that John and the Doc would both object for pretty much the same reasons.

"Doc!" Derek's voice boomed out and John pulled the trigger in startled surprise. There was no safety on the Sig Sauer.

Sheldon half-turned at the sound of his nickname and caught the muzzle flash out of the corner of one eye and that started a miraculous chain of events within his mind.

He calculated the speed of the bullet, the obvious trajectory, the distance between the young man and himself and came to a conclusion: he was going to die.

That realization brought forth another torrent of calculations, thoughts, suppositions, hypotheses regarding the well-known 'butterfly effect' that were interrupted rather abruptly by the passage of 124 grains of projectile traveling at 1200 ft/second through the space he previously occupied.

Cameron Phillips was struck in the forehead by the exiting projectile after she threw Sheldon bodily out of its path. Had she not done so, the impact would have severed his spine somewhere between the T5 and T7 vertebrae instead of just gouging a groove out of the skin near his shoulder. It was more of a burn from the bullet's graze than a wound.

Two male voices echoed "Cameron" and one ran towards where she was kneeling over the man who fussed at her to 'leave me alone – you've got a dent in your forehead,' in a quieter voice than he'd said her name, 'and your higher functions may be impaired'.

"You are the one whose 'higher functions' may suffer if you bleed out." He was in no danger of that, of course, but she needed him calm. Humans responded to trauma by going into shock. She knew that from her database. She knew everything about humans except how to interact with them on a personal level – except perhaps with this man.

All that changed after the blow to her forehead. Even 432 foot pounds of energy couldn't stop a terminator, but it could damage 'higher functions' just as Sheldon warned her.

It damaged the emo-chip that Sheldon had recalibrated. It automatically went into 'reset' and rebooted to its default programs – the ones that were driving Sarah and Derek nuts.

Sheldon tried to get up but Cameron pressed her palm down on his bony chest to stop him.

"No. Don't move, baby. You've been shot."

He saw that her eyes, brown with gold and green flecks, were slightly unfocused and the pupils were unequal, and that she was crying but without any tears.

John Connor knelt beside Cameron and tried to see how much damage she'd sustained but she simply pushed him away, using an unusual degree of force. He landed a few feet away on his butt.

She screamed at him to 'stay the fuck away from Doc' and then she turned her attention back to Sheldon.

"Oh, Doc, I almost lost you. You're the only one who treats me like a real woman not a thing and I – I think I love you, Doc!"

Sheldon turned beet red but kept his wits about him. He fumbled around in his messenger bag and handed her his emergency first aid kit. While she was opening it, he pulled out a stun gun and tapped her on the neck, immobilizing her temporarily. She sprawled motionless across him, her eyes open and he thought he saw a momentary flash of red behind her irises but ignored it.

Derek and John rolled Cameron off of Sheldon and John pointed his pistol at Sheldon saying, "You killed her!" Derek jerked the gun from his hand.

"He stunned her temporarily, idiot! He'd never hurt her."

"I need a knife. I have to replace her emo-chip before she reboots. She doesn't know what she's saying. The bullet must have damaged the chip."

Derek handed him a combat knife and Sheldon quickly located the last incision in her scalp and popped the medical staples and then quickly removed the chip and replaced it with the one he brought from the future.

Derek had manhandled John back to the verandah and told Sarah to 'keep him out of our way' and then rushed back to help Sheldon but he'd already finished and was wrapping a gauze pad and bandage around his upper arm one-handed. He'd pulled his t-shirts over his head and was bare-chested – a pale but toned chest.

Cameron sported a similar bandage on the wound on her forehead. It was a textbook example of how to bandage a wound whereas the one Sheldon was putting on was more haphazard.

"John, honey, you know she didn't mean it. You heard Sheldon – the chip was damaged and he replaced it. Tin Miss will be okay, you'll see."

Sarah had long ago accepted the odd 'emotional attachment' that the two had. John thought it was 'love' but Sarah knew better. He might 'love' her but Cameron was programmed to be his bodyguard and used all her talents to perform her task and mission. Sarah didn't think a machine could love so she wrote it off to 'faking it off for the mission'.

She also ignored the sounds of enthusiastic sexual gymnastics that emanated from his, okay, their bedroom. He was 23 for God's sake and if he got off using her, she could ignore it. It wasn't like he could actually have a real social life.

Sarah looked back into the kitchen and saw Penny standing in the doorway, watching. There were tears running down her cheeks. Before Sarah could say or do anything, Penny turned around and ran from the bungalow. A minute later she heard her car start.

'So much has happened to her world in such a short time and she was barely hanging on but now this – this crap happens!'

Not a cliffie - I just ran out of steam. Bedrest is tiring.

Rep