Mind Over Majesty
Penelope ran through the forest, her yellow jump suit sporting all manner of cuts and gashes. Her arms and face were also covered in scrapes and bruises from her narrow escape from that fancy, high-tech security prison. She had escaped only 3 hours ago and was running for her life from police dogs, night vision choppers and a few proxy drones. Any other time and she'd love to crack into said drones and see what kind of tech she could pull out, but right now the only thing on her mind was escape...and getting back to Bentley. She couldn't remember what happened over the last month, it was all a giant black void laced with fear and self-loathing, she didn't know what happened but she knew she had done something horrible.
With a quick turn and a dash through a particularly thorny bush she managed to give the dogs the slip. She found a nearby lake and ducked into it, swimming just under the surface to mask her scent and also stay out of sight. If she could just get a little further up stream she could get to her safe house and lay low long enough to get in contact with Bentley, or Sly or anyone really. She could feel it in her gut, she had done something horrible, she had to find out what and try desperately to make amends. What if she had hurt Bentley or one of her other family? She grew nauseous just thinking about it and she nearly took a lung full of water when she thought she might have broken Bentley's heart.
After another ten minutes of swimming and five more minutes of dodging drones and slipping past searching police officers Penelope finally reached her safe house. With a flip of a hidden switch a door appeared in the side of the hill and she slipped inside quietly. The lights flickered on and she made her way over to her holographic display table and tapped in the Cooper number Bentley gave her in case of emergency. The display blinked green two...three...four times before the green display switched to clear and a face appeared in the display. It was the face of the man she loved and wanted to see again in person, but as the shock wore off the turtles face shifted to anger and disgust. 'What did I do? What did I do?' wondered the mouse as she looked into the disgruntled turtles face.
"What do you want...Penelope?" She could hear the anger that pooled just beneath the surface of Bentley's calm poker face, and the question came again: 'What did I do?'
"H-hey Bentley, Um...Long time no see?" She tried with a weak smile as she watched his eyes roll in annoyance and he raised a hand to switch the display off. She panicked, whatever she had done had to have been bad for calm, cool, collected Bentley to show that much anger. "W-wait, P-please, I don't know what I did but I'm sorry Bentley, whatever it was must have been bad cause you are so angry right now and its likely justified and I must have screwed up royally for you to not want to even look at me...Please...Can we please just talk?" She was in tears now, they ran down her white face and burned a few cuts on her cheeks, but she didn't care, all that mattered was fixing this mess she made.
She saw Bentley sigh and lower his hand, an irritated scowl marring his features as he leans into the projector. "You are telling me you don't remember stealing our time machine schematics, building a working time machine for La Paradox, helping him ruin the Coopers of the past, stealing Sir Galleth Cooper's sword cane and handing it to La Paradox's minions and then, as a final dash of salt in my face you beat up my friends, nearly killed Sly and broke my heart all to help me reach my "Full Potential," None of this sounding familiar at all, you blasted rat?!" Bentley all but howled the last three words, his composure broken, his own cheeks running with tears from a broken heart. Penelope cupped her hands over her mouth and the tears came harder, she had never seen Bentley so angry or in such despair. She had done all that? She had broken sweet Bentley's heart and nearly killed a man she respected as a leader? No wonder he hated her.
"No..." Came the quiet response as she looked into the eyes of her now Ex-lover and tried to reach out through the display to touch his cheek even though she knew that was impossible. She sniffled and bit her left thumb to try and regain her composure, to try and fix this horrible mess. "No Bentley, I don't remember any of that, I don't have memories of anything in the past month. The last thing I remember was heading home from that Gala, you remember, with the spiked punch and Sly trying his hand at Karaoke?" She looked up to see him nod slowly, he seemed to have calmed down enough to at least hear her out, maybe she still had a chance to correct what went wrong. "I was heading back to the apartment when I heard someone calling for help, I turned and ran down the alley and when I turned the next corner I remember seeing an elephant in a red dress and what looked like a horn lodged in her trunk. There was music and then...nothing. I woke up in that prison here in Europe and quickly used the tech there to make my escape. That's it...that's all I remember Bentley." She tried desperately to put every ounce of sincerity into her words as she could, Bentley had to believe or she'd lose the best person to ever roll into her life.
Penelope watched as Bentley moved into his thinking pose, one hand to his chin and the other slightly adjusting his glasses. She hoped her story was enough to make him believe or at least give them a jumping off point to start over from. Then Bentley looked at her with the hardest expression she'd ever seen, his eyes like sharp obsidian as they zeroed in on her and made her feel very small. "Would you be willing to go through a few tests to determine if you have any lingering effects of Miss Decibel's hypnosis music in your brain? If so then...maybe we can talk."
Penelope was over the moon, she could fix this! She was so excited that she was practically bouncing in place, she didn't have to lose the man she loved because of some stupid elephant lady and her hypnotic music. Penelope nodded her head vigorously and smiled a bright smile which caused Bentley to clear his throat in embarrassment and return her megawatt smile with a small one of his own. She heard him muttering something about hoping her story was true before his face vanished and a set of coordinates appeared, with a heading stating that it was for HQ. Penelope was up and moving before she could even think twice about what it all meant. She tossed open her utility cabinet and pulled out her prototype jet pack that she was building between projects with Bentley and slipped it on before walking outside and zipping off into the night. Penelope was hopeful for the first time in a month, maybe they could start over and put an end to this misunderstanding. She hoped they could because she didn't want to be apart from Bentley longer than she had to be. With a mid-air twist she turned the jet pack towards Paris and headed for the coordinates Bentley gave her, in just under two hours she would be at the hide out and maybe, just maybe she could fix this.