Chapter Three: Lethal Autonomous Weapon

Ruby was right where Yang had said she'd be. She was alone, going through the motions with Crescent Rose, and Penny took the opportunity to watch her practice from the doorway. She'd seen Ruby fight before, but Penny had always had her own threats to deal with and couldn't take the time to fully appreciate Ruby's combat abilities.

Looking now, Penny could clearly see that Ruby was in her element. Her scythe was a blur in her hands as she twisted and leaped. She was utilizing that energy she was always bursting with, giving it an outlet, shaping herself into a violent storm of blades and bullets. The training dummy never stood a chance.

"Victory for team RWBY!" Ruby yelled, hands in the air. "The crowd goes wild!"

Penny clapped. "Good job, Ruby!"

Ruby yelped and spun around towards Penny. Crescent Rose wobbled dangerously in her hand, but she got a grip on it before it could fall. "Penny! I didn't know you were there."

"Apologies," Penny said as she stepped into the room. "I didn't want to distract you. That was a very impressive move you executed."

"Thanks! I've been working on that one for a while." Ruby collapsed Crescent Rose and returned it to its spot on her back. "Did you need me for something?"

Penny shook her head. "I just wanted to see you. Is that okay?"

"Of course that's okay." Ruby smiled. "We're friends, aren't we?" She glanced back over her shoulder at the destroyed dummy. "Just give me a sec to clean up, and then we can go do something together."

Penny tilted her head. The sign by the door had said the room was reserved for another half hour still. "You're done already?"

"Yeah, it's okay." Ruby laughed as she picked up the dummy's remains. "I think Professor Grimm's had enough."

True, there was only so much that Ruby could work on by herself. But it seemed a waste to just give up the rest of her time. Thinking back to their conversation by the fountain, Penny got an idea. "Do you still want to spar together?" she asked.

Ruby dropped the dummy and spun to face Penny. There was a sparkle in her eyes that reminded Penny of the way she looked at weapon catalogues and cookie jars. "Yes, please!"

With a grin, Penny joined Ruby in the center of the room and drew her weapons. They stood facing each other for a moment, each sizing the other up. Penny's initial instinct was to go easy on Ruby; she was just a huntress-in-training, after all. Penny was built for battle, was meant to go toe-to-toe with even the strongest of enemies.

But Penny reconsidered when she saw the fire in Ruby's eyes. In a sense, Ruby too was built for battle. She'd dedicated herself to this life and had already gone further than any of her peers her age. What she lacked in technique and discipline she'd made up for with sheer enthusiasm and dedication. It wouldn't be a fair fight, but she deserved no less than Penny's best.

"Ready?" Penny asked.

Ruby just nodded.

"Begin!"

Ruby was gone in a flash of petals. With her Semblance, she was too fast for even Penny to track. She rematerialized directly in front of Penny, scythe baring down on her. Penny deflected with one of her swords at the last second, and the clang of their blades echoed throughout the room. She directed the rest of her swords to fly in for a counterattack.

Ruby fired off a shot first. The recoil sent her flying back, leaving Penny's blades to slash harmlessly through the air.

"Nice try!" Ruby yelled. She twirled her weapon and it transformed. Now she held a sniper rifle, trained directly on Penny.

With no time to spare, Penny drew all her swords in front of her. She had them spin rapidly in a wide circle that acted as a barrier against Ruby's bullets. The impact of each shot thudded against the shield, and Penny felt the vibrations travel all the way down the wires connected to her back. When she saw an opening, she threw one of the swords out.

Ruby only barely dodged. She flashed a triumphant grin and continued her barrage, not noticing that the sword lodged in the wall behind her had gone exactly where Penny wanted it.

She used the wire connecting herself to the sword to pull herself forward. Ruby's eyes widened as the distance between them closed in a second. Now it was Penny's turn for the offensive.

She rained her swords down on Ruby from all sides, forcing her to switch back to her scythe and start batting them away. She couldn't block them all, and Penny got a few good hits in before Ruby vanished, leaving behind nothing but rose petals.

Penny's sensors alerted her to danger from behind, and she dropped to the ground just in time to feel the blade whir past where her head had been. She swept her legs out in a wide arc, hoping to trip Ruby up, but she didn't hit anything. Before Ruby could follow up with another attack, Penny flung two swords into the ceiling and used them to lift herself up, high above Ruby.

"Hey, no fair!" Ruby yelled, but she was already switching her weapon back to its gun form to counter.

Penny just smiled and brought the rest of her swords in front of her, spinning them to charge her laser attack.

"Uh oh."

Ruby dove to the side just in time; the blast left a sizeable scorch mark on the ground right behind her. Before she could recover, Penny pulled herself up higher and flipped to plant her feet on the ceiling. She crouched down low and kicked off, retracting the blades tethering her there as she did so. At the same time, she brought all her swords together in front of her and combined them. The force of her jump was working together with gravity, concentrating power into the point of her blade.

Ruby raised her scythe to meet Penny's attack head on. The resulting crash sent them both flying back, and Ruby managed to convert the momentum into a roll and land on her feet. Now they stood facing each other on opposite sides of the room, each waiting for the other to make the next move.

Penny knew she had the advantage here. Ruby was breathing heavily, and sweat had her bangs clinging to her forehead. No doubt, she was feeling the effects of her earlier training session on top of the strain from their current fight. Penny, who had no such limitations, should've been pressing forward, not giving Ruby a moment to recover.

But Ruby's face gave her pause. She didn't look even slightly intimidated, despite having taken several hits from Penny while giving none in return. If anything, she looked stronger than ever. More alive. This was what she lived for, Penny realized. Pushed to her limits and with nothing to rely on but her weapon and her own skills, Ruby was having the time of her life.

Penny had never seen anything so beautiful.

And then Ruby vanished, and the moment passed. Penny prepared to block a hit, but it never came; instead of slowing down to strike, Ruby was speeding in circles around her, creating a cyclone with winds strong enough to send a person flying. That was bad news for her swords, and she retracted them into the storage compartment on her back before they could get tangled up. But Penny herself was safe; her metal body meant she weighed quite a bit more than the average person, and her feet remained firmly planted on the ground.

Penny thought that this was a miscalculation on Ruby's part, but she'd forgotten to consider the rose petals. Normally, they were nothing more than a stylish flair, a side-effect of Ruby's Semblance. Now, though, they were caught in Ruby's tornado. Hundreds, possibly thousands of them were surrounding Penny, trapping her in a swirling pillar of red. She could barely see past her own nose and, more importantly, the constant motion was interfering with her sensors.

Something slammed hard into her side, sending her stumbling. Before she could catch herself, there was another blow from behind. Ruby must've been slowing down just long enough to get a hit in before rejoining the tempest.

The strikes were almost constant now, each one coming from a different angle. Penny's Aura was draining rapidly; she needed to counter this attack fast, or it would all be over for her. But she couldn't do anything if she couldn't tell where the next attack would come from.

Since she couldn't see, she had to rely on her other senses. While weathering blow after blow, she tried to use the data gained from each one to build a predictive model of where the next would come from. And… there! Just before each strike, barely noticeable even with her sensors, there was a disturbance in the flow of petals as Ruby rematerialized. Now she could tell where the next attack would be coming from, but there wasn't even half a second between that warning and the actual attack.

Penny acted on instinct when her sensors indicated an attack coming from the left, turning herself to face it. Ruby was speeding at her, holding her scythe horizontally behind her back so that its blade would catch Penny as she blew past. With not even a moment to spare before impact, Penny threw her hands out in front of her. She caught the scythe by the blade.

Even with her Aura blunting the pain, Penny had to fight her every instinct screaming at her to let go. Ruby started firing off shots, probably hoping that the recoil would loosen Penny's grip. Penny gritted her teeth and held on.

With Ruby trapped, the wind had died down, and the rose petals were drifting slowly to the ground. It was safe for Penny to use her blades again. She knew she only had moments before Ruby transformed Crescent Rose and forced her to let go, so she aimed for a quick, decisive blow. While maintaining her hold on the weapon, she rotated her body so that her back was facing Ruby. Then, she launched her swords out of their storage compartment at full speed.

They struck Ruby right in the chest. She cried out in surprise as she lost her grip on her weapon and got launched back, landing flat on her rear.

Penny knew the fight was as good as over. Ruby was a fearsome opponent, but hand-to-hand combat was not her strong suit. Without her scythe, there was little she could do against Penny.

With a smile, Penny sent all her swords in to deliver the finishing blow.

~ o ~

Afterwards, Ruby had returned to her room to take a shower, promising to come right back so that she and Penny could do something else together. Penny now stood at the entrance to the academy, waiting for her and thinking back on their fight.

There had been a moment, when the battle had lulled, where Penny had once again behaved counter to her programming. She'd gotten so distracted by Ruby, by the unexpected swell of emotion that the sight of her had set off, that she'd failed to press her advantage, and had almost lost the match as a result.

That shouldn't have been able to happen. Penny's primary purpose, the reason she'd been created, was to win fights. Sure, Dad had given her far more functionality than was strictly necessary for that endeavor, but it didn't change the fact that he wouldn't have been given the resources to complete her if she hadn't been useful to the Atlas military. And yet, all it took was one girl to distract her from the goal that had been hard-coded into her.

She could no longer convince herself that "friendship" was a strong enough word to describe the feelings she had for Ruby. But if it wasn't friendship, and it wasn't love, then what was it?

"Penny!"

Penny turned to the sound of her friend's voice and saw only a red blur. She stumbled back a step as Ruby crashed into her and squeezed her in a tight hug.

"I can't stop thinking about how amazing you were!" Ruby looked up at Penny with sparkles in her eyes.

She was so close. The smell of her freshly washed hair was overwhelming Penny's sensors. Penny could only smile and listen as Ruby gushed about their battle.

"I bet I'm gonna be sore all over tomorrow, but it was so worth it! You were like: Pew! Woosh! Hah!"—Ruby flailed her arms about to accentuate each sound effect—"And there was nothing I could do! I fought harder than I've ever fought before, but you beat me no problem."

Penny couldn't help the smile on her face. Only Ruby could be so excited by a loss. Still, hearing her sell herself short had helped Penny reactivate her speech module. "You performed excellently as well, Ruby. I had to overclock my processors just to keep up with you."

Ruby opened her mouth to say something else, but she was interrupted by a low rumbling sound. She clutched her stomach and gave an embarrassed laugh. "Sorry, I really need to eat something. I was actually just thinking of heading out to the city for dinner. Do you wanna come with?" Ruby was blushing for some reason.

"I'd—"

"Oh, wait. Sorry!" Now Ruby's face was turning pale. "Do you even eat? I can't believe I don't know that about you. What kind of friend wouldn't know that? And then I just go and invite you out without even thinking—"

"It's okay, Ruby." Penny had to suppress a laugh, not wanting Ruby to take it the wrong way. "It's not necessary for me, but I can eat food. I wouldn't make a very convincing Human if I couldn't."

The color returned to Ruby's face as she breathed out in relief. "Oh yeah. That makes sense."

"As for your earlier question"—Penny reached forward and took Ruby's hands in her own—"I'd love to join you for dinner!"

"Great!" Ruby gave Penny's hands a brief squeeze before letting them fall. "C'mon, let's go! I'm starving!"

Ruby sped off, leaving Penny to chase after her with a laugh.