(Fictional story about fictional characters)
(This is my interpretation of S1, E6; "The Middle Earth Paradigm")
***
The four nerds trudged up the three flights of stairs leading to Apartment 4A, complaining and rehashing their recent thrashing in Paintball at the hands (and guns) of a juvenile bar- mitzvah party team. They were exhausted from toting their heavy, cumbersome, state-of-the-art protective equipment and "head nerd" Sheldon was haranguing them about their embarrassing defeat. "Wolowitz shot me in the back," he barked.
"You were leading us into disaster," Howard replied.
"I was giving clear and concise orders," Sheldon corrected him.
"You were hiding behind a tree yelling, 'get the kid in the yarmulke,'" his roommate Leonard disagreed.
As they rounded the bend in the staircase, they met their beautiful blonde neighbor Penny who was descending the stairs wearing her totally nondescript and drab, and yet on her incredibly sexy; Cheesecake Factory uniform. "Oh hey guys," she chirped, "so how was Paintball? Did you have fun," she inquired.
"Sure," Sheldon whined, "if you consider being fragged by your own troops, fun."
"Okayyyy," she proceeded, "hey I'm having a party on Saturday so if you're around, you should come by."
Leering at her cleavage, Howard asked, "a boy-girl party?"
"Well, there will be girls there and there will be boys there...and it's a party," she admitted, "so...yeah. And there will be music and dancing."
She thought the quartet was going to get whiplash from shaking their heads as they replied, basically in unison, "oh no...we...we don't dance," with Sheldon finally just saying, "no."
Penny replied, "are you sure...come on, it's Halloween."
"A Halloween party," Sheldon asked.
"You mean with costumes," Howard's eyebrows raised as he continued to stare at Penny's inviting cleavage.
"Uh...yeah," Penny answered with a puzzled look on her face.
The four nerds just formed a circle and looked at each other as if reading each other's minds. "Is there a theme," Leonard wanted to know.
"Um...Halloween," Penny stated.
Sheldon quizzed her, "are the costumes random or genre specific?"
"As usual, I'm not following," Penny admitted.
"He's asking if we can come as any costume we want...," Leonard began before Sheldon interrupted.
"Comic book, science fiction, anime, Greek gods, TV, film, Norse gods, Roman gods, cartoon..." Sheldon spouted off before Penny grinned and headed toward the stairs.
"Any costume you want," she sighed, and patted Sheldon's cheek as she passed.
"Gentleman...to the sewing machines," Howard declared.
On the day of the party, Leonard heard a knock on their door and went to answer it, proud of the very authentic The Flash costume he was wearing. In rushed Howard, also sporting a Flash costume, causing Leonard to exclaim, "oh no."
Right behind Howard, Raj jumped through the doorway exclaiming, "make way for the fastest...," and he never finished his sentence when he saw two other costumes just like his.
This time Howard said, "oh no."
Almost immediately, from behind Leonard, they heard another "oh no" as Sheldon came out of his room also dressed as The Flash. "This is why I wanted to have a costume meeting," he proclaimed.
"Wait...we all have other costumes," Leonard suggested, "we can all just change."
"Or," Raj volunteered, "we can all just walk right behind each other in a line and it will look like one person going really fast."
"No...no," Howard stated, "this is a boy-girl party and this Flash goes solo."
"OK, so we all change and no one gets to be The Flash...agreed," Leonard asked.
"Agreed," they nodded...and Leonard quickly added, "I call Frodo."
Nearly two hours later, they were back in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment with Leonard carefully pulling on his hairy ears when Raj came through the door, "sorry I am late but my hammer got caught in the bus door."
"You choose Thor," Leonard asked, slightly surprised.
"What...just because I'm Indian, I can't go as a Norse god...that's racist you know," Raj told him. "Look at Howard...he's not English but he's dressed as Peter Pan."
"I'm not Peter Pan," Howard told him in a disgusted tone, "I'm Robin Hood," and he held up a bow.
"Are you sure because I saw Peter Pan and Cathy Rigby was dressed just like you...she's a little bigger of course," Raj informed him. "Oh, and look at Sheldon," as the quirky scientist emerged from his room dressed in a black jumpsuit with vertical white lines, "he's neither sound or light but he's obviously the Doppler effect."
Leonard approached Sheldon and said, "there's something I wanted to talk to you about. This is the first opportunity I'll have for Penny to see me as one of her social group and I'd really like it if you didn't embarrass me by being...you know...you."
Walking across the hall to Penny's apartment, Howard informed the group, "if anyone gets lucky tonight, I've got a dozen condoms in my quiver," and then he knocked on her door with his bow.
Opening her door, Penny was genuinely surprised to see them, but greeted them with a big smile, "oh hey guys."
"Sorry we're late," Sheldon stated.
"Late," Penny asked, "but it's only 7:05."