THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION

Description: The gang gets superpowers. It's not as cool as some of them always thought. Alternate Season 9 premiere.

Notes: As before, where details like the characters' middle names or the actual name and address of Sheldon's East Texas childhood home have not been established, I have made up names for the sake of the story; these names are not official and should not be expected to recur in any other BBT story.

Disclaimer: The author does not own THE BIG BANG THEORY or any of the characters.

- 4 –

HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 2015, 4:01 P.M.

Lucy didn't know what would have happened if the door hadn't burst open at that exact moment, but she never wanted to find out. Neither girl had noticed all the medical devices going off in a cascade of alarms. The loud boom of the door crashing open, as the armoured cops and the doctors poured in, made both Lucy's and Emily's heads snap sideways in sheer reflex; the instant the gaze that connected them broke, Emily's mental grip broke as well, shattering the paralysis. The ghost-state hit Lucy in a tidal wave of terror, so strong that she dropped through the floor as if it didn't exist, her wrist passing out of Emily's clenched fist like fog.

An instant later, she caught herself and flipped back into solidity, just in time to drop to hands and knees in the middle of the hallway below. An orderly cried out in shock and leapt back, plastering himself against the wall. For a moment he and Lucy just stared at each other. Then he grabbed a walkie-talkie on his belt with shaking hands and shouted, "Security! We've got one of the Primaries, on the seventh floor! Securi—" He was cut off by the dim sound of gunfire from above, and then agonized shrieks. He stared up at the ceiling dumbly, and then again at Lucy.

Lucy shrugged. "I think Security's going to have more important stuff to worry about for a little while," she said to the orderly. "And I have to tell you, if I were you I'd be seriously thinking about career changes right now. Gotta plan for the future, you know? Which would include, like, being alive to have one. 'Bye." She waved at him, grinned sheepishly, and closed her eyes just as she saw more suited men running towards her. Could she do this again? Trigger the ghost-state with just the right timing, just, like, that—

The floor vanished from under her; her stomach flipped over; she resolidified and landed on hands and knees again in another corridor. Sixth floor, she reminded herself. More startled yells, more calls for help: she ignored them both. Again. Ghost, drop; solid, land. Fifth floor. Again. Ghost, drop, land; fourth floor. Ghost, drop, land—and she fell with a thump right onto a blue-masked doctor in the middle of an operating room, knocking him over and away from the patient on the table, whose condition Lucy couldn't tell for certain but who was definitely showing off parts of one's insides never meant to be visible. Over the yells of outrage and fright, she scrambled to her feet, blurted "Sorry!" at the doctors and nurses, hurled herself at the room's exit and staggered out into the hall. That was it. She was finding an elevator and doing this the easy way. Signs on the wall told her which way to go; she followed them—

-and ran right into the woman she'd seen downstairs, the agent in charge of everything here, Page. They goggled at one another for a moment before Page snagged her wrist, spun her around and slammed her into the wall, holding her against it with her body weight. "Lucy Armbruster!" she shouted, digging with one hand for something—cuffs, Taser, a gun? "You are hereby under arrest for—"

Lucy called up the ghost-state with everything she had.

She and Page fell through the floor together, all the way through the second floor elevator vestibule, and into the first floor's vestibule before the impact knocked them both apart, rolling over the floor. A crowd of suited agents, cops and green-scrubbed doctors whirled to stare at them all. Head spinning, Lucy fumbled for her last shreds of control, and found it just as Page sprang upright and flung herself at her. She ghosted out completely, vanishing from sight. Page staggered through her, spun around and cast wildly left and right, while Lucy sprinted down the hallway towards the main doors. "Stop her!" she bellowed. "That was Armbruster! She's going for the door! Stop her!"

The agents at the door tried their best, arms out, as if they could bar the way of someone they could neither see nor touch. Heart pounding, Lucy ran straight through them, straight through the doors beyond, down the curved driveway beyond and out into the street and the sunlight.

It was like running into a wall of fire. Her eyes exploded in agony, instantly blind. She screamed, reeling backwards, and before she knew it had lurched back into reality, falling to her butt on the sidewalk. The pain was gone and she could see again, but as she looked back all she saw was more agents pounding down the driveway after her. They had heavy squarish black pistols in their hands; Lucy recognized them from her Guns & Ammo magazines—Tasers. Gasping for breath, Lucy staggered to her feet. Her legs trembled; her lungs burned. With a slow pulse of despair, she realized she'd never be able to outrun these guys. Even in the ghost-state, if she couldn't vanish they'd just dog her until her strength ran out and she collapsed. That was it. There was nothing she could do—

A rumbling roar came from down the street. Lucy glanced to one side. A municipal garbage truck was approaching. And suddenly a last-ditch idea came to mind. If this didn't work, she was dead. But if she just gave up, she had a terrible suspicion her next destination was just like Kurt Winters': Sedated in a nameless room where nobody would ever see her again. Anything was preferable to that. Anything.

The agents were almost within firing range for the Taser darts. Lucy gulped. And then, just as the leader swung up his pistol and took aim, she stepped backwards into the street, straight into the path of the oncoming garbage truck, squeezed her eyes shut, and ghosted.

The impact of the truck felt like a body slam from a mattress. The world disappeared around her. Lucy reached out blindly and pulled herself up into the truck, swimming against the solid matter of the chassis and engine block until she broke out into a dark space and fell onto a soft, wet, squishy pile of stuff she didn't want to think about. The stench almost made her vomit, but she held her nose shut and breathed as shallowly as she could. If the driver had noticed her, he'd clearly ignored it once he felt no impact. She would probably only have a few minutes until they coordinated cars to go after the truck, but at the speed it was going, that would give her enough time to get a decent distance away and ghost herself out through the side. On foot, she could find her own way home—

No, she suddenly thought. Not home. They had her address, they would only go there. And if Raj and his friends had also escaped, Lucy was pretty sure there was only one place they could be. The FBI probably knew exactly where that was, as well . . . but Penny would be there, as would the others. Maybe that would make a difference. Maybe all of them together would be too strong to stop.

Together. Strangely, even alone in the stinking dark, that word made her smile.

HOFSTADTER-COOPER RESIDENCE – 2311 LOS ROBLES AVENUE, #4A

4:07 P.M.

In the armchair, with a blanket wrapped around her, Amy huddled over the mug of tea Sheldon had made for her, caught somewhere between gratitude, dread, nausea and frustration. She still didn't feel much better; her skin was crawling as if her nerves had all turned into sandpaper, and her head throbbed dully. She sipped the tea in tiny, infrequent gulps, not willing to test her stomach further. Throwing up was the last thing she needed.

Unfortunately, the second last thing she needed was the argument currently underway in her ex-boyfriend's home.

"I still don't get this!" Raj cried, storming back and forth. "Fifteen minutes ago you were all gung-ho to go back and take on Mr. Man, now you're all perfectly happy to sit and let Lucy and Emily both rot?!"

"Lucy can walk through walls, Raj," said Penny impatiently. "I think she's going to be fine."

Howard nodded. "Yeah, and no offense, Raj, but—wait." He twisted to face Penny. "Lucy can walk through walls? Whoa." He grinned. "Wonder how the hell that works."

Raj glared at him. "I'm glad to see you share my concern."

Howard rolled his eyes. "Look, buddy, I hate to say this, but concern for who? The ex who broke your heart by being more damaged than any of us, or the woman who would have been an ex months ago if you'd had the jubblies to go through with it? I was willing to take on the government when it meant getting my wife and child back. I'm sorry. This just doesn't come up to that priority level." He went to Bernadette and put his arm around her shoulder. Bernadette laid her head on his and took his hand.

Raj's jaw tightened. "So that's it, huh, buddy? You've got your significant others, screw me and mine? Well, the hell with you. The hell with all of you. I'm out of here." He stormed to the front door, opened it, strode through and slammed it behind him—and the slam echoed simultaneously from the corridor leading to the bedrooms. Raj stormed back into the living room and stopped dead, goggling. Everybody stared back at him. Then realization struck him. "Sheldon!"

Sheldon nodded in satisfaction. "Experiment #1 in remotely creating a closed spacelike curve, successful. Boy, I'm on fire today." He suddenly looked disquieted. "Although I really hope that's not literal for anybody here. I haven't practiced our emergency evac routines in a while."

Raj stomped up to Sheldon and glared into his face. "Sheldon, I swear, if you don't let me out of this apartment we're going to see if you can teleport fast enough to dodge a punch."

Sheldon lifted his hands placatingly. "Raj, I am simply trying to make sure you don't repeat your foolish pattern of making decisions while emotionally overwrought. Because I think you have to acknowledge that they tend to be incredibly stupid." He folded his arms and looked smug.

It was the smug look, Amy thought later, that must have been the trigger. Raj drew back a fist, opened his mouth—probably to shout something like You son of a bitch, although knowing Rajesh it was as likely to be something like You unholy offcasting of Vishnu's bowels!—but the fist never even landed before something else struck Amy like a smack in the face from a padded club on fire: blazing, furious rage, searing and blistering. The impact rocked her back in the armchair so hard that she dropped her tea, and only dimly felt herself sliding out of the chair onto the floor. For an eternally long, agonizing half a second that anger thundered through her brain like hot lava. Then it spun in on itself with nauseating speed and became a freezing, saltwater blast of fear and confusion; a second later, it vanished.

Amy blinked herself back to awareness, finding herself lying on her side on the floor. Only Raj was still standing upright in the apartment, and the appalled, aghast look on his face was wrenching. Leonard lay on his back by the door, blinking dazedly up at the ceiling, his glasses askew; Penny was on her knees beside him, arms clutched over her head like a child hiding from bullies. Howard and Bernadette lay sprawled on the couch as if Raj had physically smashed them both back onto it, gasping for breath. But it was Sheldon who looked the worst. On the floor beside her, he sat on his butt, legs outstretched, pale as a ghost, staring up at Raj, holding his head with both hands as if keeping it from flying apart . . . and the look of terror on his face was that of a five-year-old confronting a nightmare. Tears were spilling down his cheeks.

As part of her neurobiology work Amy had once read the results of a little-known study in transcranial magnetic stimulation. Subjects had been instructed to contemplate various emotionally potent images and concepts while having various parts of their brains stimulated; the study itself had been inconclusive, as a lot of neuroscience tended to be, but one part of it had always stayed with Amy. A very few of the subjects—all informed volunteers—had undergone stimulation while viewing real-life police images of abused children. None of them had any such abuse in their background, but under the right level of stimulus, all had suddenly reacted as if they did, with the same level of emotional breakdown; some had even needed counselling, afterwards. Amy suspected that was part of the reason why similar study proposals were so seldom approved nowadays. And those subjects' reactions were exactly what Sheldon was showing now.

Her heart broke. All her own anger and frustration was forgotten. She reached out to touch Sheldon's shoulder—and the instant she did, something else flashed through her, a zing like a static shock but strangely pleasant. It took her a moment to realize all her symptoms had gone, instantly; she felt as well as she ever had. But that wasn't important. Sheldon had whipped around to face her, staring as if he didn't know who she was.

"Sheldon?" she whispered. "Sheldon, are you—?"

Sheldon cried out, a wordless yelp of panic and misery, and scrambled to his feet. "You . . . stay away from me!" he shouted, voice cracking. "You hurt me! You're all out to hurt me, I knew it, I always did! Leave me alone, all of you! Leave me alone!" He swiped his hand across the air, and seemed to tear it open; the ragged hole that yawned before him seared Amy's nerves like a knife-wound, showing what looked like a living room full of old but comfortable furniture. Sobbing, Sheldon plunged through it, stood on the other side with his shoulders shaking for a moment, then spun back and yanked the edges of the rip closed like the curtains of a window. The rip sealed up; a long, distorted blur seemed to hover in the air behind it like a translucent scar on space itself, before gradually blurring out and vanishing. Amy watched it disappear, feeling like someone had driven a spike through her chest.

"Oh, shit," breathed Raj. He looked around at everyone else. "Oh, shit, oh—" Abruptly he stopped, closed his eyes and pushed his hands down, as if physically closing a lid. "No," he said firmly, "no, no. Enough of that." He looked at Howard with the air of someone determined to face a firing squad. "Howard. My friend. I swear to Vishnu that I never meant to hurt you. Any of you. I—" He swallowed, and looked around at them. "I will leave, if you want me to."

In the long silence that followed, Amy could see Rajesh's control visibly crumble, as he watched his friends exchange frightened, uncertain looks. He slumped, and turned to the door. When he opened it the space beyond was only the ordinary hallway. He stopped on the threshold, then took a breath.

"Raj, no, wait." Bernadette jumped up, ran to his side and grabbed his arm. "It's okay. You didn't mean it, we can tell. Don't go. Stay with us. Please."

Raj stared at her. "Do . . . do you mean it?"

Bernadette breathed deep as if bracing herself for something, but didn't look away. "You can tell if I mean it," she said, and gave him a meaningful look.

Raj gazed back at her. His shoulders slumped again, but this time, Amy knew, in relief. He pressed his lips together until they stopped trembling. "Please don't make me cry," he said, in a choked voice. "Because I think we all know now that if I start crying, everybody's going to start crying." He managed a smile. Bernadette reached up and drew him down into an embrace, hugging his shoulders tightly.

Leonard elbowed Penny lightly in the side. "See? Not just me."

Penny snorted. "Yeah, but you didn't have malfunctioning superpowers as an excuse." She held up her forefinger, a sudden look of bright mischief in her eyes. "Hey—betcha I know what that was, I've read some of your comics. That was, uh, 'projective empathy,' right? Raj can transmit what he's feeling to the people around him?"

Leonard grinned in surprised delight. "That's exactly right." He cupped her face with one hand. "Oh my God, you sound so hot when you talk geek."

Penny returned the grin. "Well, what the hell, it might become professional knowledge now, right?" She directed an intent scowl at Raj. "But listen, buddy, I've only got one thing to say to you: Do not have sex anywhere near me until you get this under control, you got it?"

Raj nodded, looking sheepish. "Uh, believe me, that's pretty far down on both the priority and the likelihood scales, right now." He sighed and let Bernadette go, then went to the couch, where Howard was still massaging his face as if trying to wake up. "Listen, dude, if you want to deck me in the face for that, feel free."

"For what?" Howard groused. "Brain-blasting me, or getting a hug from my wife that was practically a full-body feel-copping?"

"Howie!" Bernadette slapped his arm.

Howard sighed. "Okay, okay, fine." He stood and clapped his hand to Raj's shoulder. "No, buddy, I am not going to deck you in the face. Partly because if I actually did hit you now I'd feel it just as badly as you did."

Raj nodded thoughtfully. "That's true, I suppose."

"Yeah," said Bernadette. "Plus, Howie, the last time you tried to kill a fly around the house you threw your shoulder out. So maybe another reason to forgive and forget."

"Amy? You okay?" Penny came across to where Amy sat on the floor and held out a hand. On sheer reflex, Amy took it and found herself yanked to her feet with shocking force; her shoes actually left the floor for a second before she dropped back down. Penny backed up with a yelp and a grimace of contrition. "Oh, god. Sorry, Ames. I keep forgetting." She frowned. "You know—you do look a whole lot better than you did. Did something happen to you? Did you just, you know, whoosh—" she spun her hands around each other "—get better, like Bernadette?"

"Uh, the typical term is enhanced physical regeneration," offered Leonard.

Penny waved at him impatiently. "I said I read some of your comics, Leonard, I didn't bother reading all of them. Seriously, Amy, what gives?"

"Well, Sheldon's gone," said Howard. "I know that typically makes me feel better."

"Yeah, I just wish I wasn't so worried." Leonard looked at the spot where Sheldon had disappeared. "That didn't look anything like what he did the other times. Call me crazy, but when someone with the power to twist space and time has a breakdown, I get unnerved. Where did he go?"

"I think I know," said Amy. She cleared his throat. "I've seen photographs of it before. It looked like the living room of his mother's house."

"Oh, God, in Texas?" Leonard rubbed his forehead. "Why the hell is it always Texas? How are we going to get him back?"

"Do we want to get him back?" said Howard.

"If we want to be able to get in and out of Huntington Memorial with Emily and Lucy, yeah, we do," said Leonard. "Unless Raj and Penny feel like fighting their way in and Bernadette's okay with walking through bullets."

Raj shook his head. "No, no, I am definitely not up for hitting anybody else with that kind of thing right now. I'm not even sure I'd be able to get into the right mood, you know? Have to be feeling it." He did an odd move that seemed half Bollywood, half yoga.

Howard stared at him, seemed about to say something, then visibly changed his mind. "Allow me to present a third option, then," he said to Leonard. "We don't worry about trying to get either Sheldon or Lucy or Emily back, and instead we decide what to do about the government agents probably on their way to find us very soon. My first recommendation would be to boogie, stat. Penny, any chance you can get us all out of here the way you, Bernie and Amy came in?"

Penny folded her arms with a frown. "I don't have enough arms to carry everybody, Howard. I got turned into Supergirl, not Octopus Girl."

Amy cleared her throat again. She wasn't at all sure about this, but the memory of watching Sheldon tear open that hole in space was still vivid in her brain, like a burn scar. "Actually . . . I think we might have another way to go for option one."

Leonard frowned. "How do you mean?"

Amy held up her hand, then closed her eyes. In her mind, she could still see that hole. As she concentrated on it, she could almost sense the flow of numbers around its edges, the coordinates that Sheldon must be able to see and manipulate consciously. The maths of it made no sense to her, but the patterns . . . those she could see, those she understood—like the neural maps of an MRI, or the delicate folds of brain tissue under a microscope. She smoothed out the edges, adjusted the height and shape into symmetric stability, then triggered the connection, feeling it snap into place like a neurotransmitter to a receptor membrane. She opened her eyes.

The portal to Mrs. Cooper's living room hung open before them, a man-high oval gap in the air. Leonard, Howard, and Raj all stared, jaws slack.

"Oh my God," breathed Penny. She clapped her hands in delight. "Oh my God, Amy, that's amazing! How'd you do that? Can you whoosh around too?"

Amy shrugged, feeling drained and oddly disappointed. For all the real wonder in Penny's eyes, she had to admit to herself that she would rather not have lucked into this particular ability. She wasn't even sure she had, yet—whatever savant-like gift Sheldon had for seeming to know exactly how to shape space-time, she felt nothing like it. But there wasn't time to go into that sort of thing now. "I don't know, Penny. But Howard's right, we're probably short on time. Let's go." Then she hesitated. "Um—maybe you should all go first. If I go first, it might close behind me. I'm not 100% sure how this works."

"Fair enough," said Leonard. He squared his shoulders, stepped through, looked around, and poked his head back in. "All clear. Come on."

One by one, they did.

632 SECOND STREET, EVERHOLT, EAST TEXAS

4:29 P.M. PACIFIC TIME / 6:29 P.M. CENTRAL TIME

Amy was the last to step through; much to her relief, the portal stayed open by itself. She wondered if she should close it and then decided not to. The house was quiet, but warm, and felt friendly. She felt torn between the urge to explore this vital part of Sheldon's past and the discomfort of feeling like the trespasser she knew she was.

Penny evidently felt no such qualms. "I've never been to Sheldon's mom's place before," she said, wandering around the living room. She picked up a photo from the side table. "Oh, my God, Sheldon was a cute kid, wasn't he?" She frowned. "Why isn't he smiling, though?" Then she picked up another picture, and grimaced. "Never mind. Question answered."

Leonard nodded. "It's terrifying, isn't it?" He looked around. "I don't hear anything. If his mom was here we'd probably still be hearing the shouting match." Suddenly a curious look crossed his face. "Wait a minute. Raj . . . any chance you can tell if he's still here?"

"Oh." Raj looked surprised. "Well, um . . . okay, let me see." He closed his eyes, lifted his hand, then one by one began pointing to the others. "Okay, Leonard, you're there, Amy's there, Penny, Howard, Bernadette . . . oh. Agh." He grimaced. "Yeah, he's here. Oh, God, that feels terrible—like cold vinegar all over pieces of broken glass. He's . . . ." He rotated, his arm coming up to point at the ceiling. "Somewhere up there. Probably his old bedroom."

Leonard's jaw tightened. He turned to face the others. "Okay. Look—he's gonna need to talk to someone he knows, someone he's positive would absolutely never hurt him. Someone he's sure will understand him enough to know what he's going through." He hesitated, then looked at Penny. "All right, sweetheart, you're up."

"Me?!" Penny pointed to herself, outraged. "Why me?"

"Natural mothering instincts? He trusts you?"

"No way, uh-uh. You're his best friend. This is your job."

Leonard sighed. "Yeah, I know. Dammit." He went down the hall and began to climb the stairs. "Natural mothering instincts, my ass," he muttered.

"Hey, hon?" Penny called after him. "Before you get too cranky where I can hear you, remember I can punch holes in concrete now."

"And I love you for that. So much!" Leonard disappeared upstairs.

Amy sighed and sat down on the couch. "Wow," she said. "This has been one heck of a day so far, hasn't it. Sorry, guys."

"What are you apologizing for?" Raj frowned, sitting down beside her. "I'm the one who lost his temper and scared Sheldon into running here."

"Yes, but I'm the one who broke up with him—even if it was just meant to be temporary. Come on, guys, it's pretty clear that he was in a far more fragile state from that than anybody thought."

Penny put up a reproving finger. "Oh no, no way, I am not going to listen to you blame yourself for that man's problems, Amy. Yeah, maybe you hurt him, but you know what? He hurt you. He could stand to think a little more about how ignoring other people's feelings tends to bite you in the ass."

Amy bit her lip. "He doesn't mean to, Penny. Sheldon knows people have feelings, and he tries to take them into account; he really does. It's just . . . he's never grasped why people feel so differently from him, most of the time, and if things don't make sense to him he, well, he tends to kind of write them off."

Penny sighed. "Yeah, I know. Look, Amy, a few months ago Sheldon told me something a lot like what you did: he said he wished he could read people's minds, and that he wished he understood people like I did. And I know he tries, believe me. But Sheldon's problem is—well, actually, it's kind of a problem Leonard has too, sort of. All the guys, in fact . . . even you a little, Ames." She sat down in an armchair, looking Amy straight in the eye. "You want to know what it is?"

Amy frowned. "Yes, please."

Penny leant forward. "All of you are so smart—learning comes so easy to all of you—that the one thing you're not so good at is sticking to learning when it's difficult—when it's not fun, when it's not interesting. You get spoiled. There's nothing I know about people that Sheldon couldn't learn, but because people don't interest him enough to make it easy, he assumes that if it doesn't make sense to him right away, it doesn't make sense at all and it's not worth wasting time on unless someone makes him. Which is why you had to do all the work in that relationship." She slumped back in her chair, lifting her hands. "I love Sheldon, Ames, but I could never be his girlfriend. I haven't got that kind of stamina. I was always amazed that you did." She shook her head in a definite motion. "Nobody should have to do that much work in a relationship."

"Seems like Leonard puts an amazing amount of work into your relationship," observed Bernadette.

Penny looked abruptly uncomfortable. "Yeah, well . . . he gets sex out of it. That makes up for a lot."

"It's true, it does," Raj admitted.

Howard rolled his eyes and made an elaborate production out of a yawn. "I'll go see if there are any drinks in the fridge," he announced. "No, no. That's okay. Don't get up. You ladies just go on talking about your feelings."

"Oh, bite me, shortstuff," Bernadette growled.

4:32 P.M. PACIFIC / 6:32 P.M. CENTRAL

Leonard had never been to this part of Mrs. Cooper's house, but it didn't take much logic to find Sheldon's room: it was the only door on the upstairs level that was closed which didn't have dust on the doorknob. He wondered how to alert Sheldon to his presence without scaring him. Then a thought came to him, and he tried and failed to repress a grin. It was too perfect.

He lifted his fist and rapped on the door, once, twice, thrice. "Sheldon." knock-knock-knock "Sheldon." knock-knock-knock. "Sheldon."

There was a long pause. Eventually the door opened. Sheldon glared out at him, his face still visibly tearstained. "I suppose you think that's funny," he muttered. "I take it you've worked out how to manipulate space-time too? I can't even have a special power of my own, I presume."

"No, actually," said Leonard. He wiggled his fingers. "Nothing for me, yet. You still have a guaranteed sidekick. No, Amy brought us here. She was able to see how you did it, and sort of—copy it, I guess."

"Amy?" Sheldon straightened, frowning. "But Amy has no interest in or aptitude for the fundamental structure of space and time."

"No, but apparently she still has an interest in you. God help the poor woman." Leonard spread his hands in appeal. "Look, can I come in? Or you come out, whichever. I don't want to talk in a doorway like a salesman."

"Why not? You're trying to manipulate me into your desired course of action; I find it an entirely appropriate paradigm." Sheldon folded his arms. "Make your case."

Leonard closed his eyes and breathed out stiffly. "Look, what Raj did was an accident; apparently he can project emotion as well as read it, and he just lost control when he lost his temper. You might not have noticed, but it hit us all pretty hard—hard enough that Raj saw what he did and is going to work very hard not to do something like that again. He's really sorry, and he'll say so himself, if you come downstairs to listen."

Sheldon nodded slowly. "All right. And Amy?"

"What about Amy?"

"Is she going to apologize for hurting me?"

Leonard let out another breath. "Honestly, Sheldon . . . I don't think so, not yet."

"Then we have nothing further to discuss. Good day." Sheldon began to close the door; Leonard lunged forward and blocked it. Sheldon glared at him. "I said good day, sir!" he snapped, and tried harder to push the door shut. Unfortunately his upper body strength still wasn't the equal of Leonard's, and after a moment he gave up. "Well, fine, if you're going to take advantage of being the muscle."

"Sheldon, Amy didn't hurt you because she wanted to, she hurt you because she had to. She needed some time to decide if . . . well, to be honest, to decide if it was worth waiting for you. She ran out of patience, Sheldon. You can't be unfamiliar with that event."

Sheldon glowered at him. "She ran out of patience," he repeated. "Oh, the irony. If she had enough patience to wait just five minutes more, that day, she'd have—" His face froze. "Well, that's not important."

"What? If she'd waited five minutes more, then . . . what?"

Sheldon shifted awkwardly, looking from side to side, not meeting Leonard's eyes. "I don't want to tell you," he said at last.

"But you're going to anyway," said Leonard. "Because we both know your obsessive-compulsive need for closure and aversion to concealing information isn't going to let you leave me hanging, Sheldon. So come on, just admit it. What were you going to do?"

Sheldon reddened. "I was . . . I was going to . . . ." He looked down and mumbled something so quietly Leonard couldn't hear it.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I was going to propose, all right?!" Sheldon snapped. He nodded, obviously grimly pleased with Leonard's utterly stunned expression. "Look, it was obvious that Amy wasn't going to stop pressuring me until she'd obtained what she wanted, and, well . . . I'll admit it, Leonard, I ran out of patience. I thought the simplest way to settle it for good was just to, in the cinematic vernacular, cut to the chase. Ceremony, cohabitation, coitus, everything. Get it all over with and get back to what's important in our relationship."

"Wow," said Leonard, after a pause. "I don't think I've ever heard you say anything so romantic."

"Well, maybe you would if you listened more. Learn from the master, padawan. You couldn't even pull off a quickie wedding in Vegas successfully."

Leonard clenched his fists and made himself breathe slowly in and out for three counts. "Sheldon—right now it's a really good thing for you I'm not Raj. You understand?"

It took Sheldon a second, but he did. "Oh," he said, looking subdued. "All right, fair enough. Let's both of us admit we've fallen short of perfect romantic success—if by varying degrees—and get back to the basic issue: If Amy apologizes for hurting me, I'll return to the group."

"All right." Leonard lifted a finger. "Counter: If you apologize for hurting Amy, I think she will apologize for hurting you."

"Distinguo," said Sheldon, lifting his own finger. "I never intended to hurt Amy. She deliberately did something she knew would hurt me. Her offense is the greater and thus her apology must come first."

"Counter-distinguo," said Leonard, having to grit his teeth. "Firstly, your unintentional offenses were, A, temporally prior to Amy's, far more numerous and of greater accumulative effect, and B, were the product of a negligence which was intentional, even if direct emotional injury was not. Secondly, the hurt occasioned to you was not the primary goal or intention, but an unpreventable side effect of a necessary good, id est, Amy's need for emotional recovery from the hurt occasioned to her. Your offense is thus the greater and so your apology should come first."

"Counter-counter-distinguo!" said Sheldon, holding up a second finger. Then he paused, eyes flicking from side to side, and abruptly put his hand down. "I really don't want to. Because that would involve admitting I made a mistake, and I hate that."

Leonard gave him an exasperated look. Sheldon sighed. "All right, all right," he grumbled. "Blast it. Who would ever have thought I'd regret not taking that undergraduate elective in Rhetoric."

"Saint Thomas Aquinas in the hizz-ouse," said Leonard serenely.

Sheldon glowered sullenly at him. "You only won that argument because I'm obviously still too emotionally traumatized to be on my full game. You wait until I haven't been blasted by an out-of-control projecting empath and then, ho, boy, Thomas Aquinas is eating dust." He rubbed his face, then frowned at his palm. "May I wash my face first, at least?"

"Sure, buddy. Go ahead."

4:39 P.M. PACIFIC / 6:39 P.M. CENTRAL

Voices and music came tinnily from the living room, indicating that someone had turned on the TV. On the stairs, Sheldon paused near the bottom. "Ah," he said, uncharacteristically subdued. "When you said us, you meant everybody. I see." He looked back at Leonard. "I'm not sure I want to do this in front of everyone, Leonard."

"We'll give you whatever privacy you need, Sheldon, but this has to be done. And by the way—" Leonard leaned down to murmur it quietly "—remember, Amy can do the same thing you can do. So there's no point portaling out of here; she can follow you."

"Yes, believe me, I remember. The universe itself conspires against me, it seems," Sheldon muttered. He walked down the hall and into his mother's living room, Leonard just behind him. "Amy Farrah Fowler," he began, without preamble, "it has been incontrovertibly, and rather infuriatingly, proven to me by logic that—"

"Sheldon." Amy looked up. "I'm really sorry, Sheldon—"

"Apology accepted. Let's go home," said Sheldon promptly, and shot Leonard a smug grin. Leonard put his hand to his forehead.

"Sheldon, look," said Amy, and pointed at the TV. Leonard finally saw the stillness, the silence, and the wide eyes of everyone watching. Unnerved, he came further in so he could see better.

The channel had been turned to the local cable affiliate and an evening news show. " . . . the single biggest disaster since the Power Pulse itself two days ago," said the newscaster. The picture cut to a helicopter shot of a very familiar hospital, surrounded by ambulances: the caption read, HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, PASADENA, CA. Smoke came from some of the windows. Patients on gurneys were being wheeled out en masse. Then another shot caught rows of black bodybags, evidently full, laid out in a back parking lot. Penny gasped.

"The government is not yet releasing details of the attack," the newscaster continued, "but the number of bodies, and the lack of suspects, makes it almost certain that a metahuman was behind it—possibly multiple metahumans. The following people have been named as persons of interest related to the event, and several of them are also key figures in the investigation of the Power Pulse itself, as well as having been confirmed as metahuman. All are currently reported to be at large."

"Uh-ohhhh," said Howard, grimacing.

Images flashed up with each name. "Confirmed metahumans include Miss Penelope Victoria Carmichaels—" ("Oh, shit," exclaimed Penny.) "—Miss Lucy Ann Armbruster, and Miss Emily Ruth Sweeney." ("Oh, boy," gulped Raj.) Beneath each of the girls' faces was a fire-alarm red label reading simply META. "Suspected metahumans include Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, Mr. Howard Joel Wolowitz—" ("Oh my God, do they go out of their way to highlight it?!" Howard snapped.) "—Dr. Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali, Dr. Leonard Leakey Hofstadter, and Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper. Drs. Hofstadter and Cooper are also the primary initiators behind the scientific experiment now thought to be responsible for the Power Pulse. All are presumed highly dangerous and should not be approached."

"Shelley?!" came a disbelieving voice. Everybody snapped around.

Mary Cooper stood in the doorway of her house. She stared at the TV set, then looked at the people in her living room. Carefully, she came in and set the bag of groceries she was carrying down by the door, then walked into the living room and up to Sheldon. Without a word, she hugged him fiercely. After a moment, he returned it.

She pulled back and looked him straight in the eyes. "Sheldon. Do you have something to tell me?"

Sheldon sighed. "Yes, mother, we do. But I have to warn you, I don't think you're going to like it. Or, possibly, believe it."

"Oh, Shelley, after what I've been seeing on the news the past two days I don't think there's much I wouldn't believe." She shooed Howard and Bernadette over and sat down on the couch. "Just tell me what you need to. I promise you, I can handle it."

"Mrs. Cooper?" said Penny, raising her hand. "Hold that thought. Please."