23
Several years ago after the mysterious blonde started appearing in the skies in the Supergirl costume, she had appeared near the Fort Marshall Army Base near Charleston, South Carolina and stopped what might have been one of the most potential disasters in the history of the base. A local Army official named Sergeant George Polarski had walked into the local Hump Bar strapped in dynamite, and while upset over losing his disinterested wife, he had tried to blow up himself and his estranged wife with the other by-standers at the local watering hole, but Bridget had stormed the location back then and saved the lives of everyone at the location. Since then, the local high school was the home of one of the first if not the largest Supergirl Fan Sites on the Internet, selling everything from Supergirl T-Shirts and caps to allegedly autographed photos to raise money for the children of soldiers who had lost their lives over seas. One of the Hump Bar survivors was Amanda Holden, the daughter of the camp commander, and when she went off to college, her sister, Emmalin, maintained the website and merchandise orders before passing it on to others. The camp radio station even had recurring segments where listeners could call in with sightings. Camp radio hostess Pamela Moran had never seen the flying blonde herself, but she loved listening to all the crazy and fascinating stories with amazement and wonder. A lot of the teenagers living on base were fans of the Supergirl sightings, and local kid, William Carver, who had transferred to Fort Marshall with his stepfather from Fort Collins in Colorado, had his own Supergirl Fan Club Website. After talking about the phenomenon with her friends, Roxy and Denise, Pam thought the story might be interesting to talk about at the base radio station. However, after learning authoress Natalie Green was in the area doing research on her, she had to ask the chubby Eastland High School graduate if she'd like to talk about her research on the radio.
"So, Natalie…" Pam started after introducing her on the radio. "This isn't just some guy's comic book-driven hallucination."
"No, girls feel empowered by her too." Natalie announced. "In fact, three of the top twelve Supergirl websites are created by young girls."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously! I'm in Charleston writing a female perspective on this whole Supergirl phenom." The cute chubby authoress lit up. "I've been talking to Professor Danielle Cuoco of the Sociology Department at the University of South Carolina, and we've been coming up with some great insights about her popularity."
"Do you really think a girl can fly and resist bullets and everything else she's been doing?" Pam looked back at Natalie across from her.
"Let the guys figure that out…" Natalie spoke up. "Forget Madonna, forget Britney Spears… female celebs can never keep the worst events of their lives from hitting the tabloids, but Super-Girl… or whatever she calls herself… everywhere she shows up great things happen. Women realize they can fight back too and take charge. We don't need to fly or flip over cars… we can do everything a man can do and just as well as they can."
"And when was the last time Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster did that…"
"She's not a ghost…" Natalie shined gleefully. "She is barely being considered a figment of someone's imagination. This girl is real despite what the media and experts claim. More and more people are seeing her everyday, and everywhere she goes, wonderful things happen. Crime rates go down. Poverty levels change. Jobs appear… When was the last time Bigfoot even saved someone's life?"
"Well, how about…" Pamela was silently handed a note from the officer who managed her radio segment. "Oh, well, my manager says we have Howard Wolowitz, the creator of the Incredible Supergirl Sightings Database, on the line." Pam checked the telephone lines. "Howard, you're on with Pamela. You have something to say?"
"Thank you, Pamela…" Howard was on his computer at home. "And may I say your voice is just as beautiful as you must be."
"Well, thank you, Howard…" Pam shined to get such a compliment from a guy over the radio.
"I just wanted to say I agree with Miss Green." Howard talked over a headset patched into his bedroom computer as he paced back and forth in his room. "Supergirl is a lot more than just some phenomenon that keeps appearing in the news. She's not just a role model for girls, she's a goddess."
"Howard…" Natalie interjected. "In my experience the guys who refer to her as a goddess are usually referring solely to her physical looks and appearance. Grantly, she's very attractive, but my book is more about how she proves to women that we're not victims. We can fight back, take charge, be someone…"
"I am all for women's rights." Howard added. "Look, I confess. I used to be the kind of guy women hated. I used to try every sleazy disgusting line in the book trying to get…"
"Howard…" Pam quickly interceded. "This is a family program."
"Attention." Howard changed his line of thought. "But since I started this site, I've noticed guys are divided between proving her existence and debating on the sources of her powers and origins and guys who just worship her because they think she's hot. Meanwhile, every girl logged into my message boards has confessed how Supergirl gave them the confidence and conviction to improve their lives, stand up for themselves or just stick it to another guy. Heck, even my girlfriend Bernadette, she's a microbiologist here at Cal Tech… she…"
"Cal Tech? Wait a second…" Pamela stopped him. "Howard, you're in California? This station only broadcasts near Charleston."
"I'm picking up your feed and sending it to a station in Atlanta, bouncing it to Nashville to send it to Tulsa to broadcast it to Dallas to a satellite over Hawaii and then to myself." He mused over his mastery over the airwaves. "Just a short hop for someone who can turn a lamp off in Tokyo."
"Oh, my god…" Natalie started grinning about to start laughing. "He's a science geek!"
"Recognized!" Howard responded. He was taping and recording the segment for his website.
"Howard!" His mother's voice echoed through the house and revealed to the viewing audience that he lived with his mother. "There's two men here to see you!"
"Well, that's a Jewish mother if I ever heard one!" Natalie couldn't stop grinning. Pam was laughing out loud. Howard felt deflated to be embarrassed on the radio.
"I gotta go…" Howard winced and wished for his own place. "Excuse me, ladies…" He signed off at his computer and pulled his headset off and screamed back to his heavyset mother. "For the love of God, ma, I was on the radio! You embarrassed me in front of millions of people!"
"Well, pardon me, Walter Cronkite!"
Tall and good-looking with a brooding intensity, Sam Winchester mused trying not to laugh in the Wolowitz's living room. Dean looked up from the plastic covers on the Sixties-era furniture, and looked as if he was holding back an explosion of laughter. Looking up again, they noticed Howard descending the stairs in blue trousers with a thick white belt and blue Superman belt buckle and a green long-sleeved sweater with thin blue and black stripes matching his high collar. His soft-soled shoes matched the color of his trousers. Dean looked at his Beatles haircut and wanted to ask him if Paul McCartney was alive, but a look from his brother stopped him.
"Hi, Howard…" Sam took charge. "I'm Sam Winchester, this is my brother, Dean." They shook hands.
"Hi…" Howard reacted mystified because Raj was the only person who ever came to see him at home. "How can I help you guys?" He gestured for them to sit on the plastic-covered yellow floral couch.
"Well, Howard…" Dean cleared his throat and looked to his brother. "We're kind of what you might call paranormal researchers… We investigate stuff that fall outside the perimeters of what's normal…"
"Okay…"
"Howard…" Sam spoke. "Several times on your site you've made references that would suggest that you know who Supergirl really is, and quite frankly, we'd like to follow up on that. You see, in our experience, beings that claim to be gods or have turned out to be gods are usually…Well…"
"Motivated by other intentions…" Dean took over. "Howard, if you have any idea of who you think this girl really is, you have to tell us so we can check her out. Even if she isn't, we have to make sure she's not like… really a demon…"
"You're kidding, right?" Howard lightly chuckled. "Are you kidding me? She's hot! She saves people."
"Howard…" Sam and his brother looked at each other. "Trust us. We know what we're doing. We encountered angels and demons, gods and demigods…"
"You know who she is, don't you?" Dean replied. Someone else had arrived. The doorbell rang as Howard looked at the Winchesters, gasped a bit stunned and unsure then chuckled a bit.
"Howard, someone's at the door!" His mother screamed from the back porch.
"I heard it!" He screamed into her direction then rose from the end of the sofa. "Look guys," He strolled past the brothers to answer the door. "I confess… there's been a few girls at my place of work I've half-heartedly wondered about, some of them a bit amusingly, and then there's this girl at…" He opened the door. "Agent Mulder?"
Sam and Dean looked nervous and stood straight up.
"Hello, Howard…" Fox Mulder strolled in wearing a long dark overcoat over his blue suit and dark blue tie. Ever since he gone public on Syfy Radio about his belief in extra-terrestrials, every geeky fan-boy, Trekkie and science fiction enthusiast adjacent to modern alien folklore knew he was. Striding in past Howard, Mulder sighed, looked at the Winchesters and cocked his ahead annoyingly to the side. "Didn't I tell you guys to leave this one alone?'
"We were just doing research…" Sam answered.
"Yeah, following a hunch…" Dean added.
"Why don't you get out of here…" Mulder told the brothers. "Otherwise the next time my wife runs into you guys I'll have her lock you guys up."
"Sounds good to me!" Dean mugged and followed his brother who was scratching his head out as they departed the house. Unsure what was happening, Howard looked to the brothers to the former agent turned author and then rubbed his head trying to figure out this experience. Heading out, Sam turned to Howard.
"Dude, your mother, I suggest Jenny Craig…" He grinned with far nobler intentions. Howard scoffed a bit shaking his head then turned in awe of the man who had very nearly ousted the truth on Area 51, the Bermuda Triangle and the government's connection to UFO research. Mulder looked back out the door then back to him.
"Howard…" He looked at him with a deep secret broiling and festering deep in his head. "Do me a favor… don't be talking to guys like that about you-know-who."
"Why not?" Howard mugged a bit and postured briefly as he realized what he thought was the truth. "Oh my god. I'm close to realizing the truth, aren't I? I'm about to figure out who she really is, aren't I?"
"Howard… all those guys want to do is exploit you to find out more about…" Mulder hesitated and looked away. "You-know-who…" The former FBI agent and paranormal investigator reached out and took Howard by his shoulder like a father taking his son to give him advice. "Who she is… is not nearly as important as what she is or what she's doing."
"Oh my god…" Howard realized the truth behind something he had only assumed. "The FBI has a file on her! She's an agent!"
"Stop talking to Riley Poole…"
"She's Penny, isn't she? I knew it!"
"That's not her real name…" Mulder continued to keep Bridget's secret.
"How close am I?" Howard followed him down off her porch just as the Winchesters drove away. "Is she someone from work? Bernadette? Is she Bernadette?!"
"Have you tried getting your mother to eat more salad?" Mulder strolled off the porch pretending to be distracted, but he only frustrated Howard even more. Eventually realizing he was not getting any further, Howard raced back to his computer and tried comparing his collection of photos to every image of Penny, but that infernal psychic cloaking device of the princess of power made comparing her to anyone impossible. He could match Penny by body type to certain images but not to others. Worse yet, in some others where he had practically perfect photos, Supergirl looked like she really could be Kelly Clarkson, Ashley Tisdale or even Reese Witherspoon. Could the "Celebrity Prankers" episode be closer to the truth than he thought or was Justin Russo correct? Was Supergirl really a spirit that hoped into the bodies of certain women in the proximity of certain incidents or disasters who then vanished and disappeared at will? More than convinced he was close to breaking her identity, Howard stayed home from joining the guys for World of Warcraft and spent the night separating his collection of a thousand and seven hundred and eighteen photos, erasing duplicates and sorting them by possible body types and aliases. Once again, Reese Witherspoon, Ashley Tisdale, Carrie Underwood and Penny from across the guy's apartment topped his best candidates, but others suggested Kelly Clarkson, Jessica Simpson, Kate Upton and even in a really weird photo from Germany, Mila Kunis. He had even tried calling Penny five times with new stunts trying to get her to confess. She hung up on him twice, and once got that weird wind tunnel effect again over the call. It seemed his only way of busting her would be catching her in costume on the street, but if her rumors of being clairvoyant were true, she'd vanish before he could close. Sometimes he thought he had busted her a long time ago and had been brainwashed to forget her secret again. His only hope was to run his photos all through a computer algorithm that merged every image into a computer-rendered extrapolation, but it was pushing three o'clock in the morning and he had to work the next day. At lunch the next day, he sat down with the tuna fish lunch his mother had made him, yawned as he reached for his drink and drifted off to sleep. Leonard scowled confusingly at him. Sheldon sighed with pompous dissent and Raj truly worried over his buddy.
"What's with Howard?" Leonard asked.
"Well, besides the fact that he's just structural engineer…" Sheldon could not stop himself from taking a chance to insult the people around him. "He still lives with his mother, he's short and he thinks that hairstyle is still contemporary." He paused. "Or were you referring to something in particular."
Leonard and Raj looked at him trying to figure him out again.
"I meant how exhausted he is!"
"He was up last night trying to figure out who Supergirl really is." Raj knew the truth. "He thinks he's close to cracking her identity."
"I heard…" Leonard ate his turkey sandwich. "Penny said he called her at least five times last night. She told me if she was Supergirl that she'd kick his ass past Jupiter for harassing her like that."
"Oh, that's ridiculous." Sheldon spoke.
"I know."
"There is no way a community college drop-out from Nebraska like Penny could possibly be Supergirl." Sheldon once again revealed his disdain for the people around him. "And besides, if she was Supergirl, she'd have to be from Kansas or Texas, and if she did kick Howard toward Jupiter, the planet's massive gravitational pull would suck him in to it."
Raj and Leonard looked at each other. One of them had to say it.
"Why Texas?" Raj took a chance.
"Because I'm from there." Sheldon answered. "And because its home to the Houston Space Central."
Raj and Leonard squirmed and made annoyed faces as Sheldon once more placed himself close to the edge of the crazy scale.
"Although she could logically be from Nevada." Sheldon added.
"Why?" Leonard was scared to ask.
"Area Fifty-One…" Sheldon continued. For once, the guys realized he had a point, and Howard seemed to snap out of his unexpected nap and jarred himself awake. Thinking he had zoned out for a few seconds, he opened his eyes wide trying to refresh himself and yawned.
"Howard, you've got to give up this Penny is Supergirl thing." Leonard sounded as he bit into his sandwich.
"But I'm so close…" The exhausted Jewish engineer shrugged and contorted in his seat trying to wake. "I'm going to see if Matt Galecki in the computer programming can help me create some photo reconstruction software like the FBI uses to create their photo renderings. I'm going to download all the pictures I have and let the program recreate her face and body type from the photos."
"What does Bernadette think about this obsession of yours?" Leonard wondered.
"She doesn't mind…" Howard mused secretly. "Sometimes we even role-play with her in the costume…" He chuckled a bit as Leonard then Sheldon groaned. Raj covertly was picturing it himself still not completely over his infatuation for the curvy biologist.
"And besides…" Howard continued boasting. "Because of my appearance on the radio, " He grinned cockily. "The Fox Network has offered me a seat in an up-coming TV discussion, Supergirl: Myth or Mystery, and I get to take a guest to the taping."
"Bernadette?"
"No, actually she's got to work."
"Who are you taking?" Raj asked.
"I can't make it either." Sheldon spoke up. "I think I'm about to make a break-through in my negative causality work."
Everyone looked at him.
"I wasn't going to ask!" Howard didn't understand why Sheldon would assume he would be the guest. Sheldon just lifted his head and looked blankly toward him. "We're going to be discussing who she could be, who she isn't, how her powers work and where she could come from." He mused before them and took a bit of the sandwich his mother made for him.
"I think she's Billie Daniels." Raj announced.
"The daughter of our landlord?" Sheldon responded dubious of the thought. "Where do you get that theory?"
"Priya met her in New York last Friday and sent me a photo of her, and get this…" He paused and leaned into the table. "She looks exactly like Penny." He responded as if they were gossipy old ladies. Sheldon looked at Howard who looked at Leonard turning to Howard trying to wake by sipping his Pepsi. Raj nodded as if he had solved the riddle. "I was thinking… what if Penny is not who she says she is? Maybe she doesn't work for Mrs. Kent and her daughter, maybe she is her daughter."
"Penny's not rich, and she doesn't own the building." Leonard shook his head in disbelief.
"Then why does she look so much like Billie Daniels?" Raj knew an odd coincidence. "You'd think if you knew someone who looked a lot like someone, you'd want to tell everyone."
"Maybe Penny isn't conscious of the similarity." Howard sat and ate his sandwich.
"I've often wondered…" Sheldon highjacked the conversation. "Could you imagine if there was another person who looked exactly like me? I mean, they wouldn't be as gifted as myself, of course, but wouldn't it be a wonderful thing to experience?"
"Well, it depends…" Howard looked at Sheldon. "Is your look-alike also a huge ass?"
Sheldon lowered his sandwich and stared at Howard briefly over his wisecrack.
"For the love of God…" Leonard winced and looked at Raj with a look of tired exasperation and forlorn disbelief. "Between Howard thinking Penny's Supergirl and you now thinking Penny's an heiress, I'm starting to wonder what is in the water you guys are drinking!"
"Leonard, come on!" Howard took over. "Think about it. Look at the clues! One: a majority of out of focus Supergirl look like Penny…"
"Or Reese Witherspoon…" Leonard added. "Or Ashley Tisdale or a blonde Jessica Alba…"
"Or Mila Kunis!" Raj responded. "I saw the photos from Germany, dude…" He looked to Howard.
"Two: my friend, Kerry, thought Penny was her long-lost sister, Bridget…" Howard added.
"Two people who look like Penny?" Sheldon and Leonard exchanged glances.
"Three: we really have no idea what Penny is doing when she claims she's working…"
"She's an actress, she goes on auditions…"
"And four: we have this girl that looks exactly like Penny." Howard stopped Leonard from talking. "Now, hear me out, what if Penny is helping hide Billie because Billie Daniels is, dare I say it, really Supergirl?"
"Or maybe…" Raj developed his idea a bit further. "Both Penny and Billie are Supergirl and they takes turns…"
"That is the most ridiculous theory you two have come up yet…" Sheldon announced.
"Thank you…" Leonard was glad to hear that at least Sheldon was being rational.
"Because there is no way Penny could possibly be Supergirl without me figuring it out first!" Sheldon pointed out, and Leonard suddenly found himself the only rational person at the table.
"And besides…" Sheldon continued. "May I remind you that Supergirl can't have her picture taken, and yet, Billie Daniels can…."
"I forgot about that." Howard continued eating the sandwich his mother made for him.
"Maybe she got her picture taken because she's in her secret identity…." Raj pointed out as Sheldon fell quiet. Looking at Leonard then Howard, the egocentric physicist leaned back and took a bite of his sandwich.
"Well?" Leonard looked at him.
"He's still wrong."
"Why am I wrong?"
"Because there is no way Penny could possibly be Supergirl without me figuring it out first!" He announced in a little huff and continued eating his lunch. Raj and Howard shared glances themselves and leaned back in their seats. Across from Raj, Leonard sipped his juice then leaned back in his seat with a knowing grin.
"All I know is…" He began. "…Is that Billie Daniels's mother, Linda Kent, was in Toronto last week and photographed, and she looks nothing like Penny's mother, Jamie Parker, who we've met, along with her father, Ralph Parker, and her sister, Sabrina Parker, who we've also met along with Harvey, her brother-in-law!"
At that moment, Penny's parents were in Los Angeles at the City Hall Building. In their real lives, he was Ralph Hinkley, a former Palmdale teacher turned superintendent of schools for Los Angeles County, and Jaime Sommars, a former tennis pro who became a teacher and now worked as director for a program that took care of special needs children. They had a bit more in common in their pasts. They had both in some form or another had been just like Penny in some aspect. Hinkley was a former superhuman champion during the Eighties after an alleged UFO incident in the desert masterminded by beings claiming to be extra-terrestrials. Following a skydiving accident and a near-death experience in her youth, Jaime had experienced her own lifetime of superheroics for the government after being convinced she had cybernetic bionic limbs. While she had been mentored by the now defunct Organization of Scientific Intelligence, Ralph had been brought up alongside the late Bill Maxwell of the FBI, but they had both lost any superhuman abilities they once had when they each got married; Ralph to his girlfriend, lawyer Pamela Davidson, and Jaime to former astronaut, Colonel Steve Austin. They had both encountered Bridget as their successor a few years ago, and when she needed someone to play the role of her parents, they were there for her. In Hinkley's office at City Hall, they were colleagues as Jamie looked to Ralph for assistance to find a new school location for her special needs kids. As Ralph looked over his map of empty local schools, a knock came to his door and he looked up to Bridget entering the room in her white shirt and blue jeans.
"Bridget…" Ralph grinned.
"Hi, sweetie…" Jaime hugged the girl as if she was her own daughter. "How are you doing? Are Leonard and Howard asking about your parents again?"
"No…" Bridget looked up forlornly. "I need… I need advice. I'm conflicted. I just can't keep dancing between two worlds anymore." She looked to Jaime and back to Ralph for guidance.
"What brought this on?" Ralph asked.
"Being what I am is ruining my friendship with Leonard," Bridget confessed. "Last week, I had to lie to Raj's sister, Priya, in New York, and it's still tearing me up inside."
Both Jamie and Ralph looked at her and then each other. They had been there. The lies, the awkward stories and incidents, the secret lives…
"I can't just quit this life and move again like I did as Billie or Chloe…" Bridget was distraught and miserable. "I'm a lot closer to these guys…"
"The guys?" Jaime wondered. "Or Leonard."
"I can't do it anymore." Bridget looked desperate. "I can't stand not having a life." She looked to Jaime and Ralph for guidance. "I can't stand lying to my friends, and yet, I don't want to give up what I'm doing. I love being able to help people, but… when does it get easier? I miss my family, and I'm losing Leonard. I have all these powers, and yet, I can't solve my own problems."
"Oh, honey…" Jaime reached out and pulled Bridget close. Ralph groaned trying to think of an insightful answer, but he struggled with it too. He gave up the heroics thing when Pam got pregnant with his daughter, but did he miss it? A little bit. The lost clothes, the awkward lies and the unexplained absences… they were something else.
"Bridget…" He once again became her fatherly voice of reason. "You have to find a balance."
"Where?" Bridget looked at him.
"You draw a line." Jaime pulled Bridget close as if she were her real daughter. "If you've decided to stay as Penny Parker, you can draw a line and decide what to keep in it and what to keep out of it."
"It's not that easy…" Bridget sighed. "Maybe I should have just stayed as Linda Kent and continued living in New York… get a nice house outside the city…"
"Come and go through a cave under the estate, get a butler named Alfred?" Ralph smirked a bit. "Kiddo, that's Batman…"
"I look so good in solid black…" Bridget sounded as if she was considering it then tried to laugh it away, but she was still hurting inside. "I have to stop being Penny Parker… I have to move on again…"
"That's going to break Leonard's heart…." Jaime tried to warn her. "Honey, moving on to another identity is not going to work. You're going to meet more people, bond with them, have these feelings again… If you keep doing that, eventually you're going to have a mental breakdown."
"Penny…" Ralph came around his desk to look the distraught blonde goddess in the eyes. "You need to fix your life now. You've been burying yourself trying to save the world so much that you're neglecting to take care of yourself." He looked into her big blue eyes. "You can find a life in both worlds, but you also have to do what Jaime says and make a line around you and decide what goes in and what stays out."
"Even if it means cutting Leonard out of my life…" Bridget's voice quivered. Ralph and Jaime glanced at each other.
"Are you Penny Parker, Bridget Hennessey… or are you Supergirl?"