In another time, she'd felt happy.
Being fully synthetic, Penny was somewhat immune to the passage of time. The nuts and bolts rusted and broke, but those could be replaced. A quick scan showed severe rusting in her knee joints, for instance. She wouldn't be walking anytime soon. Not that she had, in a very long time.
Penny couldn't feel pain. Her creator had deemed such a function unnecessary, a hindrance for an android meant for combat. Yet she'd felt broken for a long time, despite her scans assuring her that a quick trip to a maintenance shop would fix her latent issues.
Penny couldn't feel sorrow. Her programming allowed her to acknowledge casualties in battle, so she could better apply pre-determined strategies, call tactical retreats, or press onwards if the losses were acceptable. Yet she missed the silent faunus, the aloof white girl, the rambunctious blonde, and most of all, she missed the one who had shown her that you truly couldn't have an aura without a soul.
Penny couldn't age. She'd been operational for 168 years; her artificial intelligence allowed her to learn endlessly, collecting her experiences and adapting them to her original programming. She could grow, mentally, but at her core, she would always be a 15 year old girl brought to synthetic life. It would, logically, be unthinkable that she would feel old and weary. Yet she did, and had felt that way for 160 years.
Penny couldn't tire out. She had no muscles, needed nothing more than her small reactor to move, and didn't produce any toxins that might slow her down after continued physical activities. Yet she had moved very little in the last century and a half. Her servos refused to respond, and her motors had long since set themselves on idle.
Penny shouldn't be able to feel, but she did. Thanks to a silly red huntress, she felt. Ruby had believed in her, in her purpose and her soul. She'd praised her beauty, and though logic dictated that line of thinking as idiotic and pointless, since her mobile platform was not designed to look good, Penny felt good when Ruby told her she was pretty. Flattered, was the feeling, Ruby had taught her.
Ruby had taught her many things.
With such a conservative father, she had little knowledge of how the world worked. Theoretically, she knew everything. It was downloaded into her memory banks, accessible at a moment's notice. But that she had the information didn't mean she knew how to interpret it. Take Faunus's rights, for instance. Logically it made perfect sense. They were as sentient as humans, and they shared land and resources. Yet humans still discriminated the Faunus, for no more reason than their differences in appearance. This and many other phenomena, she experienced on her many escapades. Her most fateful would have her meet Ruby.
In another time, Penny had not believed in fate. Ironic that she now believed that her destiny lied in a small alcove, covered in a ragged red hood.