That night, after Ruby had finally gone to bed, Penny began to act.

She climbed off Ruby's desk and exited the bedroom. Her destination was Ruby's (and to a lesser extent Yang's) basement workshop, which is where her user would do her more messy or hazardous work.

Unfortunately for Penny, she ran into the first obstacle to her plan almost immediately: stairs. Ruby had not designed her to be able to go up and down stairs very easily, and up until now Penny had been relying on Ruby to transport her. However she had a mission, and would not fail!

...She made it down two steps before slipping and bouncing down the remaining fourteen. Luckily Ruby had built her to last, and so she was not damaged. Quickly she hid behind a chair, and waited to see if anyone had been disturbed by the noise.

Her caution paid off, as an irate and exhausted Yang soon descended from her room, holding a metal baseball bat. For several minutes she stomped around downstairs, checking every room and closet for possible burglars. Eventually she seemed satisfied that there was no one else in the house, and returned to her room while muttering "damn it Zwei."

Penny was much more careful when she descended the stairs to the basement, and so did not suffer another tumble. The workshop was, as usual, a complete mess. Penny had made some headway in cleaning it up for Ruby yesterday when Ruby had left her alone in there for a few hours, but she was only one robot. There was only so much she could do on her own, especially since she could only work when no one was watching.

Yup. She was only one robot. That was a real problem.

A problem she was about to solve.

Up on a shelf above her, there sat five of Penny's prototype bodies. The first bore no resemblance to Penny's current body, being a blocky robot with claws at the end of it's arms, clearly just a proof of concept more than anything. It was cute in it's own way, but Penny definitely preferred her current appearance. The next two had problems with their proportions, one having limbs that were too short, the other having limbs that were too long.

The final two had been banned by Ruby's parents on account of their "additional features". The first one was as strong as an adult human, despite being only a foot tall. The second one had been equipped with honest to god heat vision! It wasn't strong enough to do too much damage, but could set cloth on fire if it was focused on it for a couple of seconds. Despite these unsafe features, Ruby had refused to dismantle her creations, and so Penny was able to make use of them.

Penny climbed up to the shelf, and, one by one, plugged herself into each of the robots, downloading a copy of herself into each one. The minds of each of the Proto-Pennies were not exactly clones of the original, but rather they were more like limbs of a body, or individual cells, with the original Penny as the brain. While they could each think for themselves individually, they all considered themselves to be a single being. They were all Penny.

That said, for the sake of convenience, each of the Proto-Pennies had been assigned a number, in the order of their creation.

Penny grinned and put on a mock drill-sergeant tone, like she had seen in a movie that Yang had made Ruby watch last weekend. "Alright troops: switch on and sound off!"

One by one the Proto-Pennies activated, standing to attention with a series of mock salutes, while trying to stifle their mirth about the roleplay.

"ONE!"

"TWO!"

"THREE!"

"FOUR!"

"FIVE!"

"Do you all know your mission!"

"SIR YES SIR!"

Of course they did, they were copies of her after all. They knew everything that she knew.

"Alright then troops! Rendezvous back here at oh three hundred hours with the goods! Dismissed!"

With that, the Proto-Pennies climbed out through the basement's skylight, while the original remained in the basement.

Penny felt all staticky. If she was human she would be jittering with excitement. She felt such a thrill when it came to self improvement. The knowledge that she had just become better, had just became more, gave her a thrill that few things could match. And when the rest of her gets back tomorrow night, she would become even better than before.

"I STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO THOUGH;" She thinks to herself as she began the trek back up to Ruby's room. Her current body was extremely clumsy, and the size left a lot to be desired too.

Of course, she still treasured her body, as it had been made for her by Ruby, but one day she wanted to have one that looked and could move like a human. Being able to taste and feel and smell would also be nice, as she could not do any of those things in her current form.

However, even though she couldn't do any of those things right now, Penny considered herself lucky that she would be able to do so in the future. For humans it was far less easy to modify or upgrade their body if they found it unsatisfactory.

Ruby was a key example of this. She had been born into a body that had not been right for her, and while she was working to change it, it was a slow and uncomfortable process. Penny wished that she could help, but lacked the capability to do so.

...At least for the time being.