With all the comic book subtext in Big Bang this story was inevitable. It has been on my computer a while unfinished but I managed to complete it today so here you go!

Merry Christmas!

Bart

BTW. I don't own these characters but I do own their alter-egos MUAHAHAAHAHA!

The Arch-Villain Conundrum

Penny loved flying.

When the meteorites fell and the powers started emerging back when she was twelve, that power was the first that came to her, and still one she adored the most.

Of course having skin that felt normal but could stop a bullet from a .45 was not a bad one to have either! The super-strength was also a perk, but it took a lot more getting used to, it gets a little annoying when you're 15 and can't dial a cell phone without pushing through the plastic.

She banked her way over Northern Pasadena, feeling the breeze through her hair.

She had hit town five years previous, as per her Superhero Bureau orders, and had taken up with the local chapter in defending the city. Currently there were four on staff, and she had fit in quite well. Her alter ego as a struggling actress/waitress was so ingrained in the west California culture as to be cliché so no one batted an eye when this blond haired, green eyed corn-fed beauty turned up with stars in her eyes.

She had a rocky start, falling in love at 18 with the first rock-jawed hero she ran across. Kurt Baron, alias Mastodon, was her boyfriend for four years, four long years. In the end, she finally had him out of her system. She still had to run patrols and see the bastard at the meetings, but for the most part after she had kicked his ass all over the sparring ring to show him just how out of her league he really was, he had backed down. (She had made the super-powered weenie cry uncle!)

That was when she moved into her current apartment, and met the nerds. She sighed. Leonard was a sweetie, and now that he seemed to have moved on from his earlier crush, he had become a warm friend. His roommate, Sheldon, well he was another thing entirely. He was the only "normal" that made her mad enough to use inappropriate force. Her urge to rip his pointy little head off his long slender neck had been nearly her undoing more than once!

She idly wandered if he had a super power for annoying people, because his ability to do so was almost magical.

The police band in her ear crackled and reports of a robbery in progress at a local jewelry warehouse that served jewelers up and down the west coast. There were enough uncut rocks to not only resale, but diamonds could be used for all sorts of devastating weapons. Could it be?

"Devastating….Doctor Devastator…damn I'm gonna have a throw down after all!" she said with a smile.

One of the reasons she was ordered to relocate to the Pasadena area was because of this armored freak that no hero could currently in the local bureau could slow down. In their first battle, she had put him through a wall, and he had blown her up, ruining her first costume and giving her a headache. They had been battling all over the city the last two years, she had come close dozens of times to ripping his helmet off, but he always managed to incapacitate or elude her. It was as close to a long-term relationship with a man as she had ever had, how sad was that?

The fact was she looked forward to these encounters because no one else had come close to defeating her, it was rather boring, and she had to pull her punches most of the time so she would not have all that annoying SH insurance paper work. With Doctor D, she could cut loose and go at him full bore, he challenged her in a way that no one else did, actually injuring her twice! (Well he caused a nosebleed and a cut on her elbow, but those were injuries!)

She banked over to the JP jewelry warehouse and sure enough, there were large muscular men, masked and armed to the teeth loading uncut jewel bags into the back of a van. She saw that the warehouse sliding door had a hole melted through, a good sign that Doctor D was nearby. She did not see the tall black and blue armored figure anywhere though. Something was amiss. He is a perfectionist and he micromanages all of his endeavors, he had to be somewhere nearby.

She waited until all but one of the D's lined up loading the van. She swept down and shoved three of them into the van with one swoop. She slammed the van door and broke the mechanism with a casual swat of her hand. They would not fire the weapons unless they wanted to kill themselves with ricochet. She strolled around to the front of the van and casually broke the door handles and tore through the hood and yanked the engine block out setting it to the side, checking her hands for oil. The remaining underling was walking out with a bag and saw her, he made to go back inside but she crossed the distance and slammed him against the wall, raising him up with one hand while she disarmed him with the other. It was very disappointing these underlings where not up to Doctor D's standards.

She tapped her earbud and called it in.

The man in the mask was struggling too much annoying her so she popped him against the wall, "Cut it out. Where is Doctor Devastator? You can go to jail or the infirmary in a body caste, your choice."

"I don't know, I swear I don't know Miss Wonderful! By the way you look nice today."

She glanced down at her pink uniform with the purple and white accents and her stylized W symbol. "Thanks!" she tapped his forehead with her index finger putting him down for the count. Sighing she listened to the perps in the van as they tried to get out of the back. The sirens began in the distance.

Suddenly her hearing picked up a cell phone ringing. It could be Doctor D checking in. She reached down, unzipped the unconscious perps' pocket, and found a small cell phone.

"Hello?"

"Why hello Miss Wonderful," stated a familiar smooth, unaccented baritone voice, "I hope my underlings have not kept you from something important."

"These losers were not your underlings. I doubt they could tie a shoe without step-by -step instructions. What was this all about?"

"Are you familiar with the Super Hero/Villain parlay?"

"Yeah."

"I officially request one, if you have the time."

Penny sighed. "What are you up too now?"

"If I were to tell you that, then you would stop me, now isn't that counterproductive?"

She gritted her teeth at his condescending tone. "Where, when, and can I kick your ass afterwards?"

"At the top of the Pinnacle Building, now, and you are certainly welcome to try."

She waited for the police, and smiled for the cameras that inevitably showed up, it was a SHB requirement, as soon as possible though she was in the air and arching her way to the tallest building in downtown.

She drew up short in the air, however when she realized that there was a table set for two on the roof. It had candelabra and a bouquet of flowers in the center. Standing to the side of a pushed out chair, obviously awaiting her was Doctor Devastator himself.

He was tall with black armor, blue accents that gleamed in the sunlight, his helmet was symmetrical and deceptively plain, he had a cape across his shoulders but she knew that it could become rigid at any moment, hard enough to deflect any projectile. She landed, and he indicated the chair he was beside for her, she obliged him but gave him a glare, as he pushed her in, to let him know there would be pain later.

He had set out on the table a nice variety of light foods, and a glass of wine that looked expensive. She knew her constitution was powerful enough that poisons or drugs would not affect her so she partook.

He could not join her without removing the armor so he graciously let her munch.

"What's this about?" she inquired after blotting her mouth with a napkin.

He shrugged. "This is my semi-annual offer to join me; I thought I'd be nicer about this year."

She smirked. "Yeah asking me last year, after you sent me flying out into the bay strapped to a missile, wasn't the best way to woo me."

He chuckled. He had a nice laugh, it had an evil edge to it but it was nice. She had often wondered about the man behind that armor. She had even considered joining him to find out more than once; of course, she knew it was just her bad-boy fetish showing up.

She sampled a little more of the pâté before answering. "Not only no, but hell no. Shall we commence with the me-kicking-your-ass part of the festivities?"

He indicated the wine and poured her a glass. "One last toast, then I will declare the parley over."

She accepted the glass, and dutifully held it aloft.

"To us, and our continued divergence, may you always fly straight, and may I always elude you. Cheers!"

She drained the glass in one gulp. "Parley over?"

"Yes."

She went to toss the table out of the way, and realized that she could not move.

He chuckled evilly. "It appears that you have realized the snag in your plans to kick my glutious. You will be restrained for another fifteen minutes or so, plenty of time for my actual minions to complete their task. I must go and supervise, alas; a super villain's work is never done. Feel free to finish the food when you regain movement, excuse me if I do not wish to be around when you do. Have a very nice day."

Penny watched the arrogant bastard take off. All she could do was mutter under her breath, "Damn it, damn it damn it…"

-

Penny drug herself up the flights of stairs to her apartment. (What a sucky day!)

She had regained movement, and took off in the direction Dr. D had gone, and then discovered the aftermath of three armored cars that had been knocked over in the duration. She was chewed out by the local authorities, Captain Vigilance her boss, (That solar powered pervert!) even Mastodon had given her a disappointed look; she nearly took his head off in disgust. She was the only one that had ever stopped Dr. D, so she had an off day! As if those jerks could do any better!

She was still fuming when she reached the landing of the fourth floor, to find the last person she should be in contact with right now standing in front of her door with his arms crossed.

"Hey Sheldon, what's up?" she chirped hoping to nice him out of her way before she lost it and tied his geeky ass into a pretzel.

"You were supposed to take me to the comic book store today, since Leonard is running those black hole simulations on the new mainframe, and is unable. You gave your word."

Penny thought of the myriad ways she could do Sheldon bodily harm before settling on, "How about I take you tomorrow? Just this once, I've had a really rough day."

She did not expect him to be reasonable and sure enough, he was not.

"Well if you are, as it appears, the type of person to shirk their duty after making a promise, then I assume I have no other recourse."

He turned in a huff and walked into his own apartment shutting the door emphatically.

If it was at all possible, she felt even worse. She wearily opened her door, and collapsed on the sofa. It seemed as if she could not do anything right today. She thought of watching some TV, but she took a nap instead.

-

A timid tap on her door awakened her later. She rolled over on the couch thankful it was not three-knock-Penny Sheldon at her door.

She drug herself off the couch and answered.

It was Leonard bashfully fidgeting as always. "Hi. Me, Howard and Raj were going to a movie. Want to come with?"

She glanced over his shoulder and saw Raj immediately begin studying his shoes, and Howard studying everything else on her but her face. "Isn't Sheldon going with you?"

Leonard suddenly looked a little pissed. "We couldn't seem to find a happy medium with him tonight. He shot down every idea we had. I don't know what his problem is."

Penny sighed. "You know, sweetie that might be my fault. I forgot to take him to the comic book store like I promised, that might have made Doctor Wackadoodle a bit pissy."

Leonard smiled. "Oh I'm sure you didn't mean to. So, the movie?"

Penny sighed. "I had a really tough day, and I feel like I might be coming down with something…rain check?"

Leonard grinned, even though she could tell he was a little disappointed. "Okay, we'll see you later then."

He waved as he joined the other two at the stairs. Raj gave her a doe eyed glance, and a small wave before he fled. Howard was about to say something disgusting, but she gave him a "stare of doom" that she usually reserved for Sheldon. Unlike the tall annoying physicist, it worked on Howard; he took off after the other two without another word.

She stood in the doorway a minute staring at apartment 4A. She really did need to apologize to Sheldon. Since he was going to be alone for the evening, maybe she could offer to watch a DVD with him. Probably something properly Sci-Fi and geeky, but some of those shows they made her watch were not too bad. She was now a Firefly fan, and bought a copy of Doctor Horrible's Sing-along Blog after she watched it with Leonard. (It was not a coincidence that Nathan Fillion was in both…woof!)

She walked over to knock on the door, but paused and used her heat vision to make sure she was not going to catch Sheldon in a compromising position; she would never hear the end of that!

Her eyes did a slow scan and suddenly she saw a heat source that could only be Sheldon in his room, and it looked like he was descending through the floor!

---

She stood there like an idiot staring at the warm red figure until he disappeared which meant that the floor had to be made of lead, not a normal Pasadena apartment feature to say the least.

Holy crap on a cracker, what's Ichabod up too?"

He was going to regret giving her a spare key for emergency purposes. She went back to her apartment and found it, using it on the door. She crossed the comic book Mecca, and down the hallway. Another quick sweep with the heat vision determined that her geeky neighbor had not reemerged.

The door was locked, but she had discovered a small talent a few years back, with a wince, she removed a hair from her head, soft to her but hard as tensile steel to everyone else. With a tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth in concentration she bent the hair into a split S shape, worked it into the lock, then with a lift and twist, the knob turned with a dull click.

She entered and was surprised to see that in the eerily fastidious inner sanctum, something was amiss.

The military neat bed was slid back on mechanical casters revealing a metal door in the floor. The side compartment on the bed was open and there was a keypad twinkling. She used her heat vision to pick up the ambient heat signature on the keypad. She saw the word immediately.

MeeMaw? Awwwwwww!

She punched in the code, the door slid back silently; she assumed that Sheldon had designed it to use while Leonard or the nerds were nearby. She braced herself and began her decent.

She stepped out onto the floor of the apartment below Sheldon and Leonard's, but the walls had been knocked out and it was completely redesigned. The floors were metal, not wood, but it had some sort of damper on it, as even with her enhanced hearing she could not hear her own footsteps. The walls were lined with computer monitors, chemical experiments, all sorts of sundry machining facilities, which were assembling what looked to be robotics. In the case located in the center of the room was something that took her breath.

There glittering in the overheads was a suit of black and blue armor.

Son of a bitch!

She saw the man himself with his back to her his fingers flying across the keyboard as he entered long strings of code. The model in the monitor was a simulation of a familiar figure. While she watched her self rendered in 3D animation there was a blue substance flowing through her extremities, but her simulated self still moved and punched the simulated Doctor Devastator through a wall.

"Damn, it won't work twice," He grumbled in a familiar purring baritone voice.

"You're damn straight, Moonpie," she called, "as a matter of fact, I'd say it's all gonna end right here."

He spun with a growl and shot here with some sort of freeze ray before she could make a move, she stopped moving while he began to run for his armor, she let him get close, then broke the crystal easily crossing the distance and grabbing him.

She lifted him off the floor and stared into his livid bright blue eyes, brighter than she remembered for some reason.

"Oh sweetie, you have no idea how long I have waited to do this," she said with a smile

He surprised her by grabbing her hands. "Your theory is flawed," he informed in his most persnickety tone. With a sudden burst of super strength he bent her hands apart and dropped to the floor, with an amazing agility he raised up a leg and kicked her across the room to crash into one of his display monitors with a flash of electricity and burnt plasma.

She watched as he limbered up, hearing joints snapping into place, he reached out a hand and waved her to bring it.

With a shout of joy, she crossed the distance and the fight was on.

He was fast, and well trained and stronger than most she had ever faced, but as she sent him through the case that held his armor, back first, he did show damage.

She stopped her assault to see him bleeding from several cuts and picking himself off the floor. "Sheldon, are you alright sweetie?" she inquired feeling a little concerned to her surprise.

He straightened his limbs out with a series of snaps and clicks, adjusted his neck and she was shocked to see the cuts close right before her eyes.

"It is going to take more than a junior college drop out's best shot to best me, Penelope, I would worry more about your own unbreakable behind if I were you," he rasped his eyes angry but somehow amused.

"Oh honey, my behind is none of your concern," Penny declared as she launched herself across the distance and the fight was back on.

She was not sure when it happened, or even what happened, but they were in a clinch and she was about to overpower him, their noses just inches apart when suddenly…she was kissing him and he was kissing her back and oh baby was he good.

They continued to trash the surrounding lair but this time it was a different sort of passion, he had muscles everywhere, how he hid them all this time was had no clue. He was limber and he was strong and made Mastodon look a steroid case.

The love making, when they got to it was so mind numbingly passionate that she forgot he was less durable and she think she might have cracked his back twice, but after a pause and a snapping sound he was back in the action.

Finally, after several protracted boughts of fast and dirty and one more sweet drawn out love making, they lay there in the shards and ruins of his secret lab wrapped in one of his prototype capes cuddled on the remains of his tool bench.

"I think I might need to redecorate," he remarked with a wry smile.

She laughed and was amazed that he seemed to understand the humor of the situation.

"Sheldon Cooper, geek and oblivious ass is just a mask like that armor isn't it," she asked while tracing his left eyebrow.

He kissed her hand. "When the meteoroids hit Texas, I was gifted with superhuman intelligence, I had to hide it somehow," he responded with a un-Shedon like smile.

"I thought you were super-strong and had a healing factor or some such," she remarked her face showing her shock.

He shrugged. "An IQ well over 200 can lead to many breakthroughs, cybernetics, and robotics"…he showed her his hand, with a wince he broke one of his fingers, but it snapped back into place…"nano-technology," he finished.

She noticed his eyes flashed blue when he demonstrated. "Neat," she said with a smile.

The elephant was in the room so she addressed it. "What do I do now, you were my favorite arch-villain," she gave him her most beguiling pout.

He sighed. "I have been funneling all my ill-gotten gains into research facilities which the government has been trying to repress since the meteors fell. I think they are covering up exactly what was in those asteroids, or at least don't want them scrutinized so they are withholding valuable funding. I am going to continue to do so."

She laughed happily. "I'll continue to kick your geeky ass too."

His smile was challenging. "You are welcome to try."

---

Two Weeks Later…

SPECIAL NEWS REPORT…

After a protracted battle across the city with Miss Wonderful, Doctor Devastator managed to subdue the pink avenger with a pair of super strong handcuffs and escape with 3 million dollars.

On an unrelated note, Cal-Tech has just received an anonymous grant that has allowed them to retain all of their astrophysics lab pursuits in the eleventh hour. This saves the university from widespread layoffs that were expected after budget shortfalls this last quarter.

"Wow, that was close," Leonard called out while Sheldon checked his email.

"I assume you are talking about the mysterious donor?" Sheldon called over his shoulder as he clicked on a familiar address.

"No I was talking about Miss Wonderful, she is so beautiful isn't she?" Leonard replied as he rewound the TiVo footage of the cotton candy colored super hero.

Sheldon smiled to himself as he read the message.

I let you win to save Raj, next time your ass is mine Moonpie!

11:00 Tonight…your lair…make sure you absorb some nano's baby I'm taking it out of your behind!

Penny

"I supposed she is not aesthetically unattractive," he replied.

His eyes flashed a bright brilliant blue as he contemplated the occasion to come, but when he turned around his mask was back into place.

The End