After another pleasant night eating takeaway and catching up with the gang, Leonard was ready to call it a night. Penny suggested watching a movie because she was bored, but Sheldon quickly shot down the idea, loyal to his rigid schedule and having a dig at her because he had an "actually important job".
"Yeah I saw that coming, good night Sheldon" Penny rolled her eyes unimpressed
"Goodnight Penny" Sheldon went to his room, oblivious to the sarcasm as usual
"So, what do you say?" Penny said to Leonard
"Sorry Penny, I need to do something today"
"Ooh, a date?" Penny teased. It wasn't often that Leonard rejected a plan to hang out with her so it made her curious
"It's just work"
"Work?"
"Yep"
"You never bring work"
"It's true, but this case is special I guess"
"What? What are you doing? Anything fun?" Penny hoped to hear at least a good story before going back to her apartment
"Just boring math stuff, but it's stuck on my mind so I want to tackle it while it's still fresh on my mind"
"Aww, I thought you were going to talk about some breakthrough invention or something" Leonard laughed at the comment, at this point it was sweet her non scientist friends had that much faith in him. And the truth was she wasn't wrong, he just didn't want to tell anyone yet
"Ha, if it was you know who wouldn't keep quiet about it" Penny laughed at Leonard's joke
"It's true, but you're the experimental one right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"You're the one that actually builds stuff"
"That's not really true, it's more about running experiments to observe physical phenomena in order to gather data about the universe" Leonard explained
"Oh.. right. Well, I better leave you to your work then, good luck" Penny dropped the subject not wanting more lessons, or to distract Leonard from his pending task
"Thanks Penny, good night" The friends bid each other farewell and Leonard went to work with a smirk. Penny's comment was wrong, but today she really wasn't far off. If his invention worked, and it just needed a few tweaks based on what he did in the lab, it could change the world.
It was a shrink ray.
He spent the whole night working on it but his hunch was right, it finally worked as expected. He tried it on his books, and even dared to experiment with some of Sheldon's figurines that were there in the apartment living room. Leonard wondered if he would notice, and how would he explain it.
But now he needed to make the big test, and he knew he needed to do it on himself. He trusted his invention, but he needed to get a feel of the changes with the scientific rigor it deserved, and involving another scientist on this meant having to share credit for something he developed all by himself so it was out of the question. The only question was how to do it.
What happens next?