"The X-Advisors..."

"The X-Advisors..." Part XXV...

My romantic tale of devotion and love...She beamed inwardly.

"We should be recording this...Evidence..." Lucy noted.

Never tell her about the Mars Rover incident...Bernadette noted quietly to Howard.

"It all began on a train..." Amy noted, radiant smile... "Where else could a Sheldon Cooper romance have begun? I was just 12, he was 11, traveling with his Meemaw, me with my poor sister Charlotte on our way to Gran Mag's...Margaret Fowler-Horowitz...Farm in Maine. The one place on Earth when Charley and I knew we were loved..."

A sister...Lucy noted to Raj, nodded. "I knew another dame was involved..."

"I feel just like Watson to a female Holmes..." Raj noted to Howard.

"Yeah, you have a bumbling Nigel Bruce quality about you..." Howard agreed.

"Het-hmmn. You wanted to know the details of my great romance...?" Amy eyed the boys, Bernadette and Lucy frowning with her.

"Please..." Howard waved...

....

"Your elder sister has Elephant Man...Lady...Syndrome?" Raj stared at Amy.

"Cured surgically, at great risk...She's a devastating beauty now in her winsome Fowler way..." Amy noted. "Though she still needs her daily injections to keep Mr. Fuggles and her other lumps from reasserting..."

Mr. Fuggles? Bernadette eyed Howard...Who shrugged.

"Sadly Charlotte and I, after being the most loving of sisters, were parted by the love of our lives..." Amy sighed. "She still never has forgiven me...And she did have first claim but...In Love and War..."

"Sheldon?" Bernadette blinked. "You and your sister fought over...Sheldon...?"

"The Angel of our existence...When he came over on the train and asked if my poor sister was an angel, our hearts melted." Amy shook her head, tearing. "I still see that beautiful, beautiful boy, so earnest...Not afraid at all...God forgive me, I couldn't keep my pledge to Charley...I guess the truth is I thought she'd be gone and if I just..."

"Stalked him..." Howard nodded. "A good strategy if they don't catch you with pepper spray or judo skills."

"Kept tabs, I meant to say..." Amy frowned. "Though I suppose it quickly did become a kind of stalking. For both of us...We'd got his name from the conductor and we researched him all summer. He was already a scientific super-star, a prodigy. We got everything he'd published and read it over and over. Even a videotape of his valedictorian address up to before he fainted at the sight of the crowd...The best two minutes of our lives up to then. Charlotte did say I should take him..." she nervously eyed the others. "But, she thought her exile in France by Dad would be the end for her...That she'd die there."

"So you came to the University of Texas at Austin..." Lucy, rather sternly. No soft-soap romantic speak about to get the better of her...

"I did..." Amy sighed. "I had to go somewhere and Grandma thought it a pretty good school while Mama, in the throes of her new-found religious fervor after Dad dumped her after cleaning out the family fortune, thought it a Godly place for me to pursue my studies since she couldn't persuade me to become a nun or an evangelical minister. Of course Mama had no idea my thoughts were not on Science alone."

"And then I found out Sheldon had lost his father and his grandfather...And then his favorite teacher, Dr. Brown..." she went on. "And wouldn't leave his room off-campus. He had no one, I had to intervene."

"You went to Dr. Stein and told him you were Missy Cooper..." Bernadette stared.

"I had to get someone to check on him, his advisor was the logical choice." Amy shrugged. "But some stranger going to him to say his anti-social prodigy was acting strangely? Not likely to be effective...And it did work." She smiled ruefully. "Too well, I'm afraid. Dr. Stein took more of a personal interest in Sheldon than I'd expected...And saw a chance to deal with a personal problem of his own family's..."

"Susan..." Raj nodded.

She nodded, sighing. "I couldn't help myself, I was so jealous after he began taking her out...To movies and walking...Dinner at her house. I followed them everywhere, sneaking around. But I couldn't go and confront them, I'd've been just a stranger to Sheldon and when Dr. Stein found out, a rather perverted stranger at that."

"Lets just say 'kinky'..." Howard patted her arm to her sly smile...

"And Susan spotted you." Lucy, shrewdly.

"She did..." Amy sighed. "I managed to avoid her but she got a good look at me...And made it pretty clear she tolerated no rivals."

Stares...

"She didn't find out who I was so she just posted campus wide emails... 'To the girl following me and Shelly around...I'm going to break your big nose if I ever catch you.' That was one of her more reasonable ones...Some were quite creative, involving having me buried in the foundation of a new building and so on..."

"She really was in love with Sheldon?" Bernadette, in wonder.

"Who wouldn't be, if they knew him, as we did?" Amy shrugged. "I betrayed my own sister to get him, I lied to all of you for years...I know what someone who loves Sheldon Cooper is capable of." She looked down... "I'd hoped Susan Stein was just a memory for him. That she'd forgotten him. But no one forgets Sheldon Cooper..." she sighed.

"Amen..." Howard nodded.

"She won't give up this easy..."Amy noted. "I wouldn't and she won't." Resolute stare... "But Sheldon loves me and even if I feel sorry for her, no one is taking that away from me."

"Well, you have nothing to worry about..." Bernadette, confidently. "Sheldon's not the sort to go in for the Lothario style."

"Guys are all the same, deep down. And that Stein sister has quite the form...And knows how ta use it." Lucy shook head. Raj eyeing her...

"I think we really need to cut back on the film noir... he noted to Howard and Bernadette, Amy giving troubled look.

"No, you're wrong Lucy. I can trust in Sheldon." Amy insisted. "Though I am afraid what Susan might be driven to when she realizes her 'form' and 'usage' won't avail her."

"Murder, I'd say..." Lucy pondered. "We'd better mount a twenty-four hour guard..."

"Lucy..." Bernadette stared.

"She might be right." Amy, thoughtfully. "Not that I'm saying I would take that option, under most circumstances..." innocent look to stares...

Lucy, narrow-eyed look. "Maybe we'd better put a twenty-four hour surveillance on Stein as well."