Chapter One: Troubleshooting

Friendship. Penny understood the concept—she had an extensive knowledge base, after all—but before coming to Beacon Academy, she had thought it was something she wasn't able to experience. Sure, there were people she liked to talk with in Atlas, but none she could call "friend".

There was a difference, she noticed, in the way they talked to her. Even the ones who were oblivious to her true nature must have been able to feel something "off" about her. It was like there was an invisible wall between her and the rest of them. She could almost forget it was there until she got too close to someone and crashed into it face-first. Every time, she was reminded that, no matter how convincing her act may be, she would never truly be a real girl.

And then she met Ruby, who had considered them friends from their very first meeting. Friendship with her… wasn't quite what Penny had pictured, to be honest. There was a lot more fighting criminals and much less painting nails and shopping together than she'd been led to believe. Even so, she treasured every moment she spent with Ruby.

Of course, Ruby didn't know that their friendship was built on a lie. How would she react if she knew the truth about Penny? Out of all the people who knew her secret, only Dad seemed to consider her a living, Human girl. But Ruby wasn't family.

Ironwood had been clear: no one in Vale could find out that she was an android. But Penny knew she couldn't keep it a secret from Ruby forever. Still, she wasn't prepared for it at all when the truth finally did come out.

~ o ~

"Penny! Please! What is going on?"

The slight tremble in Ruby's voice was what got Penny to stop running. She turned around to face her friend, wondering why it had to happen like this. Instead of being able to tell Ruby about it on her own terms, the choice had been taken from her by a speeding truck headed right for Ruby. Without thinking, Penny had pushed Ruby out of the way and stopped the truck with her bare hands. She hadn't waited around to see Ruby's shocked reaction. Instead, she'd run as fast as she could down an alleyway. But, of course, Ruby had chased after her.

Now Penny stood there, not sure what to say, where to even begin. It was only when her sensors started alerting her to possible escape routes that she realized what a state she was in. Her heightened awareness of her surroundings, her slowed perception of time, her tensed springs ready to bolt into action at the slightest signal—all were part of her combat protocols. But they weren't looking to take down an enemy. They were urging her to flee.

In Humans, this feeling would be called fear. But that couldn't be right. Penny was afraid? Of Ruby? Put like that, she realized how illogical her actions were. Ruby would never do anything to hurt her.

With some effort, Penny took manual control of her autonomous functions and disengaged her fear response. Her status slowly returned to normal. Finally ready, Penny looked straight into her friend's silver eyes and said, "Ruby… I'm not a real girl."

~ o ~

"Are you listening to me?"

Ciel's sharp voice cut into Penny's reminiscing. It had been a month since then, but Penny still found herself looking back on it frequently.

She was in her room at Beacon, which she shared with Ciel and the rest of her teammates. Penny had left the decorating up to the others, and so the room's layout ended up being similar to the dorms at Atlas Academy, with beds on one side, desks on the other, and not much else. No bunk beds though; Penny had shown them pictures of how team RWBY had managed to set theirs up, but the others' faces had paled and Ciel had written them off as accidents waiting to happen.

Looking at Ciel now, Penny said, "Of course I'm listening." She failed to disguise the hiccup that followed.

"Hmmm." Her teammate's face was as expressionless as ever. Had she believed Penny? "Tell me what I was just talking about." Apparently not.

Little did Ciel know, though, that Penny could answer that question without needing to have paid attention. Even if most of her processing power had been focused elsewhere, Penny's audio receivers would still have captured Ciel's words. It was a simple task for her to retrieve the data from her memory banks.

Or at least, it should've been. Much to Penny's confusion, there was no data there for her to retrieve. That wasn't supposed to be possible; she was constantly recording data and storing it for later use. But for the last few minutes, those normal processes had been suspended in favor of accessing that old memory of her and Ruby.

She'd have to puzzle that out later. For now, Ciel was still waiting for an answer, so Penny ran some quick probability simulations based on past conversations they'd had. "You were giving me information on team RWBY for the Vytal Festival." Or at least, she was 73.489% sure of it.

"Hmmm." Ciel still didn't look like she was buying it, but after a glance at her watch she let the subject drop.

Penny devoted all her attention to the rest of the briefing (which, she was pleased to note, did turn out to be about team RWBY). Afterwards, she excused herself to take a walk around the grounds. She needed to think about what had just happened.

The incident with Ciel was far from the only glitch that Penny had experienced recently. She'd been plagued with them for the last month, and despite multiple self-diagnostics and reboots, she'd yet to find the cause.

The glitches had started right after she'd told Ruby the truth about herself. Ruby had been taken aback at first, but she'd recovered remarkably fast. It had gone so much better than Penny could've possibly hoped for, and she'd wrapped Ruby in a tight hug.

That was when it happened. As she was holding Ruby close and telling her what an amazing friend she was, Penny noticed that the temperature in her face was rising. Strange. Was her temperature regulator malfunctioning? A quick systems scan failed to find anything wrong, but the problem persisted. Even manually controlling her cooling system wasn't having any effect. She wasn't in danger—the temperature was well within the acceptable range—but that didn't change the fact that her body wasn't behaving as it should.

And then she started noticing other strange things. Like how her sense of touch was amplified far beyond its normal parameters, especially in places her body came in contact with Ruby's. And how her olfactory sensors were failing to detect anything but strawberry-scented shampoo, despite being right next to a dumpster in a dirty alley. It was odd, but since none of the problems seemed to be urgent, she decided to ignore them until later.

The glitches had resolved themselves by the time she and Ruby had parted, but that wasn't the last she saw of them. There was the time that her audio receivers got stuck tuned to Ruby's voice from across the cafeteria instead of to Penny's teammates right next to her. Or when her speech processor gave out while she was talking with Ruby, and she started stuttering and tripping over her words. The list went on and on, culminating with her recent experience with Ciel.

It didn't take long to establish the pattern that each incident was related to Ruby in some way. That was Penny's only lead, though, despite having had a month to figure it out. It was getting harder to justify not asking Dad for help. But he'd been so hesitant to let her stay at Beacon alone, and she worried that if he found out there was something wrong with her, he'd want her to come home immediately.

"Penny! Over here!"

Ruby's voice pulled Penny back into the present. She found herself in the courtyard, having walked there on autopilot while mulling over her problems. She made a quick scan of her surroundings and found Ruby standing by the fountain, waving to her. Penny smiled and started sprinting towards her as fast as she could. "Ruby!"

"Wait! Penny, no!" Ruby's arms were a blur as they waved about in front of her face, but there was no time to get out of Penny's way. Within seconds, Penny had tackled her to the ground in a hug.

"It's very good to see you!"

Ruby, meanwhile, was kicking her arms and legs beneath Penny with all her might. "Can't… breathe. Light… fading."

"Sorry!" Penny rolled herself off of Ruby, who immediately sat up and took a big breath of air. "Do you require assistance? I'm fully-versed in life support techniques."

Ruby turned and offered her a weak smile. "Thanks, but I'm good." In a blur, Ruby was upright, one hand on her hips and the other thrust triumphantly in the air. "It'll take more than that to take me out!"

Penny hopped to her feet to join her. "Then do I have permission to hug you longer next time?"

Ruby paled. "Please don't."

"Understood," Penny said, shoulders slumping.

That got Ruby laughing. "You sure like hugs, don't you?"

"I don't know." Penny tilted her head, brows furrowed. She hadn't hugged enough people to determine how she felt about them in general. "At the very least, I like hugging you."

"Oh." Ruby turned her face away from Penny, a blush on her cheeks. "Thanks."

"Is something the matter?" Penny leaned to the side to catch Ruby's gaze again. "Should I not have said that?"

Ruby shook her head. "No, I'm happy you did."

"That's a relief." Penny straightened up and smiled wide at Ruby. "I'm still learning what it means to be friends since I've never had one before."

"I think you're doing a great job." Ruby looked down and shuffled her feet. "I'm really glad I get to be your friend."

"And I, yours!"

Ruby, face still red, looked up and gave Penny a small smile. For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then, Ruby's eyes widened, and she said, "Hey! You distracted me with all this embarrassing stuff." She reached an arm behind her. "I called you over because I wanted to show you something." In a flash, she drew her scythe, Crescent Rose, from its holster on her back. She gave it a practiced twirl and expanded it to its full size. "Notice anything different?"

Penny compared the weapon to a past image she had of it in her memory. She spotted the difference immediately. "You got a new scope!"

"Yep!" Ruby was bouncing up and down in her excitement. "Weiss promised she'd get me one if I got an A on our last essay. It was reeeealy boring reading all those books, but I just had to have it!"

Penny smiled as Ruby went on to explain the finer points of choosing the perfect scope. Since Penny had access to all of Atlas Academy's weapon manuals, she could've learned everything there was to know on the subject in the blink of an eye. But she preferred hearing it from Ruby. The way her entire face lit up when she got to talk about her passion was more than enough compensation for the extra time spent.

When she was done, Ruby gave her scythe an affectionate pat. "I could spend all day working on this baby." Her eyes then turned to Penny. "I'd love to get my hands on your weapons too. Or at least see them in action again."

Penny smiled. "Just let me know the next time you find some bad guys, and I'll be there to assist as soon as I can."

Ruby transformed her weapon and stowed it on her back. "I'll make sure to do that. But, also…" Ruby trailed off, rocking back and forth on her feet. "I was thinking, maybe we could spar together? If you want to, I mean."

"That sounds like fun!"

"Yes!" Ruby jumped in the air and pumped her fist. "Do you have time now? We could go—"

"Ruby!" Weiss's voice made them both jump, and Ruby's face drained of color.

"Oh no."

"I've been looking everywhere for you!" Weiss stormed over to them, giving Penny a polite greeting before turning the full force of her gaze to Ruby. "Did you forget that we have to study for our tests next week?"

"But next week is so far away!" Ruby pleaded. "Can't I just—"

"No," Weiss cut her off. She turned and smiled at Penny. "Sorry, I need to borrow Ruby for a bit." Before Ruby could protest any further, Weiss grabbed her by the cape and started dragging her away.

"Don't forget about me!" Ruby called, reaching her hand out to Penny.

Penny just smiled and waved goodbye, suppressing the urge to laugh.

Once she was gone, Penny was surprised to notice that the sun was already setting. It had felt like they'd only been talking for a few minutes, but it must've been closer to an hour. Normally, Penny's internal clock made it so that she had an impeccable sense of time, but it hadn't been functioning properly while she was with Ruby.

She added the glitch to the list.