AN: I feel like I've made a mistake somewhere in here but I'm a bit too tired right now to fish it out. I'll check in the morning and see if I can spot it. Anyways, hope you all enjoy the chapter !
Beowolf:
The Grimm regarded the small orange-haired girl who entered the room with a bit of suspicion. She seemed a little depressed, the air around her a bit heavy with a menagerie of feelings which ranged from ennui to forlornness. It surprised the Beowolf, the smaller humans rarely had such a cocktail of emotions rolling off of them.
The girl didn't even register the Grimm as she approached the General and started speaking with him in a low voice that the Beowolf couldn't pick up despite its best (passive) efforts. It seemed a strange choice for the man to bring the girl in here after the Beowolf dispatched the machines. Unless this was a charge of the silver-haired man which the Grimm was supposed to fight next, which it considered doubtful. Despite the cushy room that it had been furnished with it had the sneaking suspicion that it wasn't supposed to leave, and had been told a few times it shouldn't, the humans did not appear to trust it. The girls and their friends aside (and minus the blonde who looked like he might soil himself when the Beowolf got close) the people seemed to regard it with equal measures of caution and fear. The silver-haired man had much more complicated emotions, even now, and as the Beowolf scented the two it was clear he maintained that strange menagerie.
The Beowolf was blissfully unaware of the reasons, of course, because nobody had bothered explaining to it at any juncture what a General was. The humans seemed to call him that from time to time and the machines spoke as such as well, but it didn't seem to be his name. T
This small linguistic error meant that the Grimm had no idea that the people who had chased it through Vale oh-so-long ago were actually under the guidance of Ironwood, nor that he actually controlled the machines.
Eventually the two broke off their huddle and the girl turned to look at the Grimm with a faux smile on her face. She took a few steps forward before bringing a finger to her chin and her expression twisted into one of confusion.
"That is a Beowolf." She stated with a hum, as if she had cracked some great mystery. "And it is Big."
Completely disregarding the girl's somewhat eccentric tone of voice the Grimm was a bit confused by the statement. All of what she said seemed quite obvious to the Beowolf, and judging by the small amount of disappointment coming off the silver-haired man it wasn't what he had been expecting either. Then, the girl started to march towards the Grimm until she had about halved the distance to about ten feet between her and it.
"Sal-U-Tations!" Her voice rang out, just a little too loud for the room, which actually surprised the Beowolf a little bit. "My Name is Penny Polendina, It Is A Pleasure To Meet You!"
She stepped even closer until she was only a couple feet away and held her hand out for a handshake. The girl was so much shorter than the Beowolf that it had to lean down to see what she was doing. She was standing about as far away as most humans did when doing their little hand contact greeting. The Beowolf, however, was not a Human, and its arms were so long and it was so tall that it was a bit awkward. Taking a full step back it held a hand out that was as large as the girl's torso.
Seeming to understand her miscalculation the girl seemed embarrassed, but took one of the Beowolf's hand into her hand shook it vigorously. Even with the somewhat extreme movements of her arm the Beowolf only needed to rotate its wrist to accommodate. The girl stopped moving her hand and seemed to be waiting for the Beowolf to do something.
The Grimm was too busy contemplating to notice something as human as awkwardness. It was trying to remember if it had actually gone out of its way to touch a human since it arrived in Vale. It had fought some humans when it had tried to escape, carried that Huntress quite a distance actually, but that wasn't a choice so much as a measured action to survive. Even around the girls it hadn't actually touched them, they had played around with it. When Ruby decided that she was going to get a height advantage over her teammates she climbed with no assistance from the Beowolf, and it simply didn't intervene.
Coming back to the present it looked down at the girl and realized that she hadn't let go either. So they sort of stood there for a moment. Unbeknownst to the Beowolf Penny was supposed to maintain her grip until the other person released, and the Beowolf itself hadn't shook hands with anyone before.
Penny:
Is There An Exception For Handshakes? Penny pondered as she filed through the reams of examples of social interactions she had stowed away somewhere in her qualitative banks. She knew the rule, be polite. And the Android definitely did not think that the Beowolf didn't know what it was doing. That would be rude and presumptuous, and those definitely were not things she was supposed to be during interactions. I never had to worry about this with Ruby. She thought, feeling a bit down after thinking about the girl. But it was true, she found things came a lot easier to her when she was around the young Huntress.
And while Penny was definitely not thinking about being anywhere other than here, pretending that she wasn't aware that the handshake should probably have been over by now, the Beowolf's hand shifted. She immediately – though not rudely mind you – retracted her hand, happy to be free of that formality. Unless that was rude. Am I being rude?
But the Beowolf didn't chastise her, so she guessed that was a good sign. She didn't really consider the fact that Grimm didn't talk.
So now that their hands were free she was left to inspect the Grimm. She had seen it of course, and it wasn't like she had forgotten what it looked like – That would be silly – she was just… A bit confused. Not that she was judging based off of a century's worth of combat data and information regarding Grimm or anything hasty like that but she didn't think Grimm were very… Pleasant.
Then, much to the girl's horror – surprise, she corrected herself – the Beowolf held its hand out again. She looked at it for a moment before she instinctively grabbed the hand, this time placing her hand roughly in the hard part of the palm where most humans shook hands. The Grimm closed its hand engulfing her own and some of her forearm before giving it a shake.
It then let go.
And they stood for another second. Before the Grimm could try again Penny made a full turn so she could look to Ironwood with a quizzical expression. She still didn't really know why she was here, the General had simply told her to introduce herself. The General's lips twitched for a moment and suddenly Penny found her entire world upside-down, her legs pinned together as she watched the floor recede away.
That Is Abnormal. She thought, as she was rotated around until she was roughly face-to-face with the Beowolf. She wasn't very concerned that her shirt was riding up a bit, and nothing in her systems was really running up red flags about what was going on. She wasn't under threat, even though she was looking at the rather large head of a species that was known to raze unprotected human settlements to the ground in a matter of minutes.
"Hello Again." She said, lifting raising her hand to wave at the Beowolf again. The Beowolf gave a bit of a nod, though it was so slight that she barely recognized it. It then did something strange, lifting up its hand so that it was in her line of sight, then lifting a thumb. She couldn't really recognize the thumb down sign from her perspective, so she twisted a bit so that she was looking at it from a bit of a better angle. Stretching like she was to the side to rotate would have been quite the strain on a human's muscles, but being a machine gave her some freedom to avoid those sorts of limitations.
Looking at it, then lifting her own hand to mimic it (now that she knew what the proper way up was) she showed the Beowolf the sign. It huffed something that she thought she caught, then looked past her at what she could only imagine to be the General. She tried to turn in the grip but found that the Beowolf wasn't really rotating to accommodate that. She was about to give up when she found the palm she was in rotate and let go, sliding her until she was able to stand with her feet on the Beowolf's hand and forearm.
She wobbled for a moment, but the fact she was even able to land on her feet at all was a testament to her inhuman reflexes. The Beowolf stood stock still until she had her footing and was able to sort of crouch on the Grimm. She saw the General taking this in with an unreadable expression on his face.
How Do They Do That? She wondered when Ironwood nodded, presumably to the Beowolf. Humans (and apparently this Beowolf) had the ability to sometimes just… Look at each other. She'd seen it dozens of times before. How Can Someone Talk Without Speaking. The Grimm probably knew, since it couldn't talk at all, but it wasn't something she had come close to mastering. She found it all so… Hard.
Beowolf:
Upon lifting the girl up by her ankles, the Grimm came to the somewhat startling realization that humans weren't as light as it thought they were. This Penny weighed significantly more than any human it had come across before. It had of course been in conflicts with humans in the past and that meant that it had a few chances to heft one or two of them up and throw them into trees or other such solid objects. None of them, even the heftiest, weighed as much as Penny did.
It was like trying to lift seven Rubys at once. Which seemed quite suspicious. It had further reason to find her odd because her exposed stomach had creases that circled around her waist. It seemed a bit strange, as they were similar to the plates used on the mechs so that they could lean this way and that. At least as far as it remembered, it hadn't been very focused on Robot booty during the recent ragdoll-ing.
When it flipped the girl, that was a bit of a cincher. She held on, which was surprising enough, and now it stood with her leaning on its arm and weighing the same as one of Atlas's machines.
With a nod from Ironwood confirming that it could continue – though with what it wasn't certain yet—it blew some air at Penny who tried to shift in its palm. She looked at it with some suspicion when it motioned for her to stand. Keeping its arm completely flat it watched the girl pull herself up until she had one foot on its palm and one on its wrist. She was standing straight now, her hands in front of her for balance.
The Beowolf tilted its head slightly and shifted its hand up and down half an inch – slowly enough that penny could still maintain her footing as she got used to the less-than-flat platform that was the Grimm's arm.
To be fair to the Beowolf in these next few moments, there are a few things to consider. First: The Grimm has not tested the strength of human Machines when being launched into the air. Second: Even if it did, it didn't know how well Penny would be able to. Third: The Beowolf wasn't concerned with either of these facts.
Not giving Penny much time to consider what it was going to do, the Beowolf stepped forward, moving its arm and bending at the elbow to keep her at the same height while it gave itself a little more room to work with. Then, using its normal slouch as a medium, straightened its legs and pushed upwards with the arm, trying to keep the girl's feet as level as possible. The new range in its shoulders helped a lot, and within half a blink the girl was rocketing above it, the only hint of her existence the peep of surprise that trailed behind her.
The Grimm felt a sharp tone of disapproval from the steel-haired man, but neither fear nor surprise. The Beowolf somehow doubted that the man had actually guessed, this, but it was more focused on the panic that had stopped its ascent but had yet to fall down.
There, high above, in the rows of rafters which criss-crossed the gymnasium, Penny could be seen holding onto the railing with one hand, looking down at the Beowolf with a fairly understandable scowl. A bit of a smile covered her face as she used her free hand to waggle a finger at the Grimm. There was a little bit of a gloat in her mannerism, and the Grimm generally knew that gesture to mean 'no'.
Ironwood:
Watching the pair, Ironwood admitted, was quite a bit like watching a kitten trying to learn to deal with a Great Dane. In this case, the Beowolf had chased – though more accurately thrown – Penny into the tree and the automaton didn't believe that it would be able to catch her.
Ironwood himself didn't know the answer to that question. It seemed a bit strange for the Beowolf to be doing what it was, though he had his suspicions. He had caught in the few split seconds that Penny had bent her legs to brace for the movement, and even though the Grimm wasn't looking it seemed to know that she wasn't just being flung. It seemed to assume that the 'Girl' would be able to recover on her own.
And based on the rather patient look that it carried while its gaze was turned up, it was planning on catching her as well, and had from the beginning.
So it was a combat exercise. An interesting choice.
He watched with interest when Penny seemed to finally give up and loose her grip after throwing him a pleading look, which he pretended not to notice. She fell the distance, but angled herself so that she wouldn't be landing near the Beowolf. She was taking the safe bet he assumed. As a part of her conditioning she should find an open area. She has no reason to trust the Grimm, and would even be internally advised against such a close encounter. He would have to admit, however, that such programming should have made it much more difficult for her to approach the Beowolf in the first place.
Shifting his attention to the Grimm, he saw that it side-stepped somewhat. It braced its legs before slowly extending an arm as if it were a baseball pitcher catching an easy fly ball, right in time for Penny to land in its outstretched hand. It was a swift movement with the speed Penny was falling at, but the General caught the Grimm closing its fingers along one side to keep her from rolling out. A good touch.
The Beowolf set Penny down and a quick once-over was enough to dispel any fears of damage, the android simply stepping down with an odd expression on her face.
That is one thing we couldn't do. Ironwood admitted, bringing a hand up and ribbing a finger along his chin. He had seen the feed of the Grimm standing face-to-face with two Paladins and remaining unfazed. Seeing its lack of response to catching a four-hundred pound weight dropped from two stories up proved Ironwood's suspicions that the Grimm was even more solid than it appeared. The fact that it had so much inertia was interesting to him. The fact that it could throw huntresses like Penny like that with such ease meant that it would be an interesting variable in combat. Penny was fast enough without needing a boost, but a Huntress moving at that speed from ground to air, and knowing that they had a safe landing when they came down? That was a good angle. A Paladin couldn't do the same thing, even with comparable strength. Not at its size and lack of tactile response; the machine would crush the person. Maybe Oobleck was wrong after all.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by seeing an outline of Penny flipping laterally through the air. She looked like she had been launched up by the Beowolf and caught right after on the opposite side. She landed easily, and at this height the Grimm didn't need to compensate, standing at its full height with the girl in its palm like a doll. She was turned away from Ironwood, and he could see Penny fidgeting on the Beowolf's hand, kicking at air with her foot.
Penny:
The girl couldn't keep her smile off her face, even her attempts at hiding it from the Beowolf failing. The corners of her lips turned up and she found herself grinning, reaching out to touch the Grimm on the muzzle. The android had never really known of contact with people aside from fighting, and even now as she felt the smooth surface of the Grimm's mask she felt a little distant from the Beast. A part of her, however, was excited.
Very excited.
When she had been hanging onto the rafters she had been dreadfully embarrassed of the fact that she was going to probably cause a sizeable dent – maybe even a hole – in the floor with her landing. She knew she wasn't exactly light, being 228.1 Kilograms meant that she wasn't exactly the lightest Huntress in amity. In fact, she knew she was a heavyweight. And she did not want to be the one to crash into the floor at a high speed…
But she was caught. She didn't fall. And even now, the Grimm flexing its fingers so that she had to shuffle from one foot to the other to stay balanced, she didn't need to touch the floor. She had implicit trust in the fact that the Beowolf wasn't going to get hurt, and she wasn't either.
She wobbled for a moment when the Grimm moved her so that she could stand on a shoulder, and she stepped on and looked for something to hold on to. The Beowolf was smooth even along the back, which she noted was different from diagrams of old Grimm that she had seen before, that had rows of spikes all along their backs. She didn't quite know what to do until a seam in the back of the Grimm's armor split, the armor burning away to show some thick hair. Taking a risk, because if she tore out the Beowolf's fur it would probably hurt quite a bit, she leaned down, grabbed a handful, and swung herself so that she was hanging on just between the shoulders.
Even digging the ends of her shoes in to stabilize herself she didn't sense any sort of shift from the Beowolf. It looked over its shoulder and she gave it a thumbs up, pulling one hand out so that she could do so. It held its own hand up so she could see it and raised its own thumb. Lowering her head so the Beowolf couldn't see, she smiled into the black fur, her traitorous smile flitting back to her lips, her eyes closing.
She held on tight when the Beowolf shifted in place, feeling its tensing before it lunged forward, the pull of force lifting her feet off of the Grimm's back. She felt the Beowolf speed forward before it leapt up. Managing to school her expression a bit more she looked up over the Grimm's shoulder to see it using momentum to carry it up the wall. She felt a small rush of excitement as it rotated against the wall, bending so that she was able to see the girders above.
She heaved until she was standing on the Grimm's shoulders, bending at her knees. She coiled before leaping skyward, the combined momentum allowing her to soar in a shallow arc up to the ceiling. She couldn't truly feel the weightlessness that humans claimed in such flight, but as she reached the top of her arc she could feel a part of her programming will her to ready for the fall, imploring her to avoid the damage she would suffer if she didn't land correctly. A completely different, all-to-enticing one, told her to hold her breath.
She rolled onto her back mid-flight and took deep breaths as she started her slow downward descent, crossing her arms over her chest like she was planning on going to sleep. She felt gravity take hold and the soft pull of the earth as she slipped down through the air.
Her eyes closed, she felt herself rotate in the air and the familiar feeling of hair against her face. She smiled and interlocked her hands in the smooth strands as the Beowolf landed gently against the floor below. Taking breaths she didn't need she held the Grimm more tightly. For the first time since she was conscious of the world she felt like she could trust someone like this. Someone – or thing – that couldn't be harmed by her, didn't find her strange. It was a similar feeling to when she met Ruby for the first time, but in this tacit exchange it didn't feel any less potent.
She slid off the Beowolf's back and didn't try and hide her grin again when it turned to look at her. I really am going to stay here when this is all over. No matter what they say.
