Halloween Challenge where writers are encouraged to create a story outlining the death of Doctor Leonard Hofstadter and/or Doctor Amy Farrah Fowler, thus stopping the deterioration of Sheldon and Penny forevermore.

RULES:

1. Sheldon/Penny - They can be platonic, romantic, smutty, Super Heroes/Villains, etc.

2. Leonard/Amy's death MAY occur anytime from the Pilot thru Season 9.

3. The death must be completed in a single chapter, although you are welcome to contribute as many different forms of death as you like as long as they are a chapter each.

4. The story must be no more than 1,500 words long.

5. Deadline is October 31, 2015.

A/N This fic is based on Series 3 Episode 23, The Lunar Excitation AKA Amy's first appearance in the show.

I had wayyyyy too much fun writing this. When Dsnynutz first challenged me to come up with a story I wasn't sure if I'd feel comfortable doing it. I've never written a death fic before, and I'm normally careful not to character bash, but... MAN was this fun :D

Hope you enjoy!

A/N2 Calm down, people! I'm not saying that I actually want Leonard or Amy to die! I just enjoyed the challenge from a literary point of view. If you read my other stuff, you'll see I'm always very careful not to character bash. I know there is no Shenny in canon. I'm just having fun. Wowsers. I'm amused and a little startled.

100 Ways to Kill a Doctor: The Lunar Exit

The six people remaining on the roof stared with varying degrees of horror at the lightly smoking remains.

Raj was the first to find his voice. "Dude! What the hell did you do?"

Zack continued to stare slack-jawed, which, to be fair, appeared to be a habitual expression but in this instance was mirrored by the rest of the gang. "Ah, man! You totally toasted that lady! I mean, I was worried you were gonna blow up the moon... not a person!"

Howard rubbed the back of his neck looking horrified but also vaguely pissed. "I told her not to stand in front of it! She should have believed me when I said I'd souped it up!"

Raj's tone turned scolding, like a long-suffering spouse. "After all the trouble we went to to find her and hook her up with Sheldon, and you turn her into the world's most charred chapatti!"

Zack tilted his head back in a laugh. "Heh. Good one."

"What is he even doing here?" Leonard demanded in a hissing undertone, his mastery over the letter "s" not helped by the fact he was still totally bombed.

Penny shrugged; fresh from a bar, she was still operating under the fuzzy warmth of an alcohol blanket. "He came back to sleep over."

Leonard's voice immediately turned high-pitched with outrage. "You came over to my room and slept with me then the next night you have another guy in your apartment?!"

Penny furrowed her brow and shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

"So..." he trailed off, spluttering, then picked up his speech again. "So, that's a little slutty, Penny!"

"Hey." Zack's eyebrows had drawn together in disapproval; he held his liquor a little better than Penny, but not by much. (Both of them held it a hell of a lot better than Leonard.) "Don't talk to her like that! Penny's a nice girl."

"Coulda fooled me," Leonard muttered, looking simultaneously pitiable and like he needed a swift kick in the pants.

His tone and words finally seemed to penetrate Penny's booze haze. "Hey! Listen here, bucko: I let Zack stay over because we were on the other side of town from his apartment. But even if I didn't, even if he and I had slept together, it would've been my choice. My business. You got it?"

Leonard flailed his limbs in a sulk and booted what may once have been a bone off to one side.

The others stared at him, appalled, and he responded with defensive bluster. "What were you all even doing up here, anyway? Howard and I threw out our backs carrying that nitrogen tank back down the stairs... Why did you bring it all up again?"

"The entity formerly known as Amy Farrah Fowler insisted we come back to the apartment and show it to her," Sheldon spoke up for the first time. He had been reviewing the smudges and marks on the ground with a clinical air. Now he moved towards the laser and started gingerly examining it from a safe peripheral vantage. "You know, Howard, I have to commend you. You really did a fine job with the circuitry."

"You don't seem very upset, Sheldon," Raj reproved. "We just found you your perfect mate, and you lost her. The least you could do is squeeze out a tear or two... or cough up the fifty bucks we laid out."

Sheldon turned down the corners of his mouth in an inadvertent but accurate turtle impression. "Perhaps I would be distressed, if you had in fact found my perfect mate. But anyone ill-advised or arrogant enough to stand in front of a laser not of their making and disregard both mine and Howard's admonitions?" He shook his head in disapproving disbelief as his accent shifted south of the Mason-Dixon line. "Well, she had her nose so high in the air she could drown in a rainstorm."

"Still sounds like your perfect match to me," Raj grumbled.

Sheldon shook his head once but emphatically. "It's only arrogance if it is unsupported by ability."

"Excuse me, could we get back to the matter at hand, please?" Leonard whined.

Howard nodded, looking grim. "We're going to have to file a police report. Accidental death." He paused, considering. "Or possibly suicide via hubris..."

Sheldon had his hands clasped behind his back. "Not necessarily, Howard. If you recalibrate the laser a mere ten degrees higher, we could eradicate the remains altogether."

Leonard waved a hand dismissively, weaving drunkenly. "Not that matter... The fact that Penny's a lying cheating, whor ̶ "

He was cut off by a powerful right hook to the jaw.

He staggered back several paces, arms pinwheeling wildly, away from the group, towards the low wall that overhung the long, long drop down ̶

̶ then recovered his footing and plopped down on the roof on his ass.

The group released their collectively held breath; all except Zack who was examining his knuckles with a confused expression.

"Your jaw is like a marshmallow." He shook it a couple of times. "Sticky like one too..."

Sheldon nodded once, half-approval, half-sympathy. "I have some dermatologically friendly solvent downstairs which should fix that right up."

"Hey!" Leonard yelled, still sitting on the floor, nursing his jaw with both hands. "Why are you helping him? He hit me!"

Sheldon sniffed. "You insulted Penny," he pointed out.

"Yeah, well... she broke my heart!"

Sheldon shook his head. "An entirely self-inflicted wound. I warned you from the start not to speak to her. But you insisted on it. Just as you insisted on my making space for her in my life. Well, I did, and now she is part of my inner circle as well as being a damsel, and therefore I cannot allow you to insult her that way in my hearing." He spoke calmly but immovably.

Leonard's expression turned outraged. "You insult her all the time!"

"I merely point to the empirical evidence, not a moral judgment thereby. And I have never accused Penny of lying or cheating in her relationships. She is far too honest to do either."

Penny looked shocked but touched. "Thank you, Moonpie."

"You're welcome." A beat. "And don't call me Moonpie."

Leonard had scrambled to his feet. "I can't believe this. You're supposed to be my friends and you're all taking her side!"

"Dude, calm down." Raj raised his hands in a soothing fashion. "We're not taking sides. But Penny is our friend, too, and you kind of had it coming..."

"Kind of had it coming-!" Leonard rushed forward with fists clenched. (Later, the gang would all think but carefully avoid vocalising that he had gone for the person with the upper body strength of a Keebler Elf rather than the people he was actually mad at, because he knew he didn't have a hope in hell against Sheldon or Zack.)

His momentum was his undoing.

His foot slipped on the bone fragment he'd kicked away minutes earlier. He flew up and back in an arc... and flipped over the side of the building.

There was a long, shocked silence. Too shocked for words or screams.

Then Howard spoke in a voice of numbed weariness:

"Okay... I vote Zack carries the nitrogen tank down."

fin