Chapter 15
Penny Polendina found herself on the streets of Vale, just across from Tukson's Book Store. Her plan was to wait for her teammates and herself to leave the building, impersonate her past self, and give Tukson a special serum that would increase his strength and augment his aura to protect him from his assassins. With him still alive, he would be able to convince her past self not to go against Pyrrha Nikos and prevent her body from being destroyed in the first place. At last, she saw herself and her teammates exiting the store.
"I will be heading to Beacon!" Her past self declared. "I look forward to properly introducing you all to Ruby!"
"Boy, you sure do like this Ruby." Jean stated. "Almost sounds like you have a crush on her."
"What? Don't be silly. Ruby is just my friend. Hic!" The android cupped a hand over her mouth and ran away with a blush.
Once Team CPPR was gone, Penny checked to make certain that no one was looking before running across the street. She entered the store and found the cat Faunus stocking shelves. "Penny? Gosh, I thought you had already left."
"Mr. Tukson, I know this will sound strange." Penny began as she revealed the syringe containing the serum. "But I need you to take this medicine to save your life-"
"Okay!" Tukson smiled.
"What? Really? Just like that?"
"Of course! If you say it's important, I believe you!" Tukson stuck his arm forward in cooperation.
"Uh… okay." Penny shrugged. In all honesty, she was expecting this mission to be much more difficult. She administered the serum and stepped back to watch his aura react to it. But instead of enhancing, the aura didn't even appear.
"Uh-oh…" Tukson looked down at his arms with a worried expression. "Penny? That serum didn't happen to have any aspirin in it, did it?"
"Um, I think so, why?"
"Oh, dear. I'm sorry, Penny. I know you meant well, but I am extremely allergic to aspirin. It weakens my aura."
"WHAT?!" Penny exclaimed as she dropped the syringe on the floor to hold her head in fear.
"Listen, Penny. Don't beat yourself up about it." Tukson led his student out the back of the store. "You go hang out with your friends. I'm sure everything will be fine."
"No, Mr. Tukson, wait-!" But it was too late. The door closed and Penny was left in the back alley. A few moments later, she heard the gunshot and watched as Emerald and Mercury exited the store.
"Oh, crud…" She muttered to herself.
Back at the cave with Luna, Penny finished explaining her failed attempt to alter the past. "And that's why I need to go back!"
"But why Atlas?" Luna asked.
"For some reason, General Ironwood has been ignoring Professor Ozpin's calls," Penny explained. "If I can explain to him why he needs to not do that, maybe he could help us in the coming crisis. ...or the past crisis ...or the past-present… WOW. Ugh, brain pain."
"Time travel does that."
"Look, the point is that if Ironwood is able to help us, then maybe, just maybe, we can lessen some of the pain we had to go through," Penny declared.
"Very well," Luna said with a nod. "Good luck, sister."
"Sister?"
"Sorry," Luna said with what seemed to be a blush on her face. "It...it gets lonely here, and...well, I can't explain it, but I feel a sort of connection with you. As if we might have been sisters in a different timeline or something. Like I said, time travel is confusing."
"It's fine," Penny said with a smile. "When this is over, I'll see about getting you a body of your own, sister."
"I… I would really like that Penny," Luna declared, somehow sounding like she was about to burst into tears of joy despite her voice still being monotone. "Anyways, good luck."
"Thanks," Penny declared as she vanished again… only to pop right back in again, a face full of both anger and sadness at the same time.
"Penny?" Luna couldn't help but ask. "What happened?"
Penny had just entered the office to talk with General Ironwood...only to have to hide under his desk as she heard someone come in the door.
"So that's your official report?" James asked with a raised eyebrow, talking into his scroll.
"Yes, I intermingled with Beacon's Team RWBY and Sun Wukong from Team SSSN and managed to assist in the capture of multiple White Fang members," her past self declared from the other end, nearly causing future-Penny to groan, realizing that Luna had accidentally sent her too far back.
Taking the robot equivalent of a cleansing breath, Penny decided that she might still be able to work with this. All she'd have to do is wait for herself to hang up and… "Very well," the General declared, interrupting the android's thoughts, "when you return, head to your quarters for the time being. I need time to think about this new development and I wish not to be disturbed in the meantime."
"Yes sir," past-Penny declared, nearly making future-Penny facepalm. Right, she couldn't talk to the General because then she'd technically be disobeying her orders. Still, she might still be able to work with this. Like Ruby always said; "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade and serve it with cookies."
Just then, James Ironwood took out his scroll and dialed a number. "It's me." He said, "Just thought you should know that Penny's showing signs of becoming more, for lack of a better term, human. She actually managed to reportedly make some friends and protected one of your shipments earlier today."
"So Pietro actually managed to give a heart to that wind-up doll," Came the unmistakable voice of Jacques Schnee, much to Penny's shock and horror. "Impressive, but now I need you to take measures to tear it out."
"Jacques, I don't understand. I thought the point of the project was to create a protector with a soul." The General remarked.
"...and we did." Jacques replied with a sense of cold indifference. "But as a General, you of all people should know that a good soldier obeys the orders they are given."
"...but a great soldier is capable of questioning those orders." James countered.
Jacques couldn't help but sigh. "James, I'm not completely heartless. I, too, care a great deal for the P.E.N.N.Y. Project, but never forget that it is a sub-committee to Project Guardsman, my project. I can take it, and Penny, away from you at any time, just as I did with Winter and Summer."
James gave a growl. "Don't you dare mention those names. Not after what you did to them."
Jacques couldn't seem to hold back a hollow chuckle. "Oh, James, it's not my fault that Winter never returned from her last mission, or that Summer ended up with another daughter during the project."
James gave a hard glare at his scroll even as Penny took time to blink at this new information regarding that last part. "Don't you dare play innocent with me. You knew as much as the rest of us that when Summer volunteered to donate a copy of her mental patterns as a starting point for your little Artificial Intelligence experiments that Penny would be, for all intents and purposes, her daughter, not yours."
Penny had to stifle a gasp at this even as Jacques could practically be heard rolling his eyes over the scroll. "So Pietro continues to indirectly remind me by insisting on calling my investment his daughter. Regardless, I gave you Penny, and the abundance of Dust reserves that you use in your weapons and equipment, and I can just as easily take them away."
"What do you want Jacques?" the General demanded.
"For Penny to remain a heartless automaton until she graduates Atlas Academy, or failing that, for her to be loyal to me and me alone." The current head of the Schnee family declared, hubris on full display. "But as it so happens, I do have another favor you can do for me in exchange for lessing those demands to simply keeping our little tin soldier on a shorter leash."
"What?" General Ironwood asked, already sounding tired.
"It has come to my attention that one Qrow Brawnwen had some information that he wished for you to pass onto Ozpin in his stead before you had him locked up." Jacques declared with a smug smile, Penny not quite knowing how to process everything she'd just heard. "I want you to make sure that Beacon's honorable headmaster never gets it."
"Why?" James demanded, unable to hide his curiosity.
"Let's just say that your old friend has been digging into information regarding my business that, should it become public, would force me to force Atlas out of the sky in retaliation."
General Ironwood just sighed. "I…" ...and that was as far as he got before a buzzer on his desk went off. "Oh, shit, I forgot I had a meeting with the board. I'll get back to you on the matter, Jacques."
"Very well." Jacques seemed to agree with a nod. "But do think about my generous offer."
James didn't even bother to answer, shutting off the scroll and tossing it onto his desk before looking out the window in frustration for a good five minutes. Finally giving a sigh, "Sorry, Oz, but it looks like from here on out, you're on your own." With that, he left for the meeting, apparently so upset with the new development that he didn't even bother to pick up the scroll again.
As James left, Penny cautiously got out from under the desk, completely flummoxed by what she'd just learned. "I...I'm Summer's daughter. Ruby's my sister," she gasped out, not quite believing what she'd heard, before shaking her head. "Pull yourself together, Penny. There will be plenty of time for an existential crisis later. Right now, you have to focus. Jacques mentioned a message from Qrow Branwen that he didn't want Ozpin to get, so the only thing I can really do is make sure he gets it."
Grabbing the General's scroll, she did a quick search and then hacked it so that she could access some of Jame's personal files, before finally finding what she was looking for. "'Queen has pawns'?" she read out, before shrugging, figuring that Ozpin would know what it meant. "And...sent," she declared, before whipping some oily tears from her eyes upon noticing a picture of Summer in one of the files scattered about Ironwood's desk. "For what it's worth, I would have been honored to call you 'Mom'," she said to the photo, despite knowing that the woman likely couldn't hear her, barely even noticing that she was returning to the "present."
"I...I'm so sorry." Luna didn't know if it meant much, but it was all she could think to say as Penny finished up her story.
"That doesn't matter right now," Penny declared, "Send me back to Beacon."
"Didn't you already try that?"
"This time, I'm going to try a different approach with the bomb. Having been through the battles already, maybe if I help my friends from the sidelines, get rid of a few problems we ran into as they happened, you know?"
"Fair enough."
"See you later," Penny saluted… only to pop right back up again. "Welp, that didn't work."
"What happened this time?"
Penny snuck through the caves until she came across the bombs. Carefully, she knelt down and removed the access panel to the detonator. Removing one of her sword's from its compartment and focused the laser to a softer beam as she cut through the wires. Suddenly, she came upon a predicament. "Hmm… red or blue?" She pondered to herself. "What was that saying Jean came up with? 'Ciel Blue and you'll make it through. Racheal Red and you'll wind up…' blue it is."
Unfortunately, cutting the blue wire triggered the bomb and Penny was engulfed in flames.
"Well, that blows."
"Never mind that. New plan: send me to Patch."
"Why?"
"To keep Summer from going on her last mission," the android declared, "I don't think it's a coincidence that during my trip back to Atlas, Jacques and the General were talking about Summer like she was alive despite how, at the time, Ruby and Yang were certain that she was dead. She must have been captured sometime before Ruby ever came to Beacon. I prevent her capture, I prevent my own creation, and hopefully I prevent the attack on Beacon itself."
"Penny..." Luna seemed to go wide-eyed at this declaration. "If you do this you'll never have existed."
"...maybe so, but Ruby will live, and that's all that matters," Penny said with a look of determination.
"...you truly are Ruby's sister," Luna said with what seemed to be a smile. "I know that you'll probably never hear this - paradox and all - but good luck, Penny."
"Thanks. I think I'll need it." Penny said as she vanished once again...only to reappear. "Quick, I need you to send me to Beacon again!"
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah, apparently Summer had already left by the time I showed up, so now I have to…"
"That won't work."
"What the…?" It took a moment for Penny to realize that she was looking at herself.
Luna seemed just as surprised when she yelled out, monotonically of course. "How did you…?"
"Let me put it this way," the second Penny declared, even as more and more Pennys pop up. "Your next plan? Goes about as well as the first few ones."
Luna's next few words summed up the situation quite nicely. "Uh oh."
"I don't understand… how can I fail so many-" Penny stopped herself once she spotted a version of her dressed in gray instead of green. "Uh… what happened to you?"
"Don't ask." The gray Penny crossed her arms, bitterly. "Just trust me; it doesn't work."
"Okay, wait…" Penny rubbed her chin, deep in thought. "Okay… it looks like I'm the last Penny to arrive, right?"
"Yes. So?" Luna replied.
"So maybe that means I'm the version of me that finally succeeds! I need to go back to the caves right before Paulette kidnapped Ciel!" She decided. "That way, I can prevent the rogue A.I. from setting up the bombs in the first place!"
The room fell silent as all the temporal copies waited for another Penny to appear. But nothing happened. "I suppose that could be it." Another Penny smiled.
"Alright then!" Penny faced the computer with a determined gleam in her eyes. "Luna, send me to the caves."
"As you wish." Luna replied as she sent Penny away one last time.
"... so seriously, what did you do?" One Penny asked the gray Penny.
"Ugh… it just seemed like a good idea at the time."
To be continued
