Jaune Arc

The next two weeks of their time in Atlas sped by in a blur. Team JNPR continued to train and practice, getting better and better as a team. They spent each morning doing physical exercises, then spent the afternoon working together, utilizing their strengths and nullifying their weaknesses.

Major Ashe may not have said it out loud, but Jaune could tell that she was proud of their progress. Over their stay, she had become their mentor, helping them work overcome their shortcomings in battle.

Jaune spent each evening with Victor Polendina, working on various improvements and innovations. Jaune was enjoying himself immensely working with the brilliant man.

Today however, Victor seemed to be especially energetic.

"Jaune, come this way. Atlas cleared me to show you a special top-secret project we've been working on." He led an intrigued Jaune through the hallways of the building to the elevator and then down to the basement.

Passing through 4 different security doors, Jaune and Victor made their way into a large room. It was completely filled with large server banks. Lights pulsed and blinked around them as they walked through. The characteristic hum of cooling systems was absent thanks to Ice Dust embedded in the frames.

Wonder what this network contains that is so important that Atlas is spending this much effort on keeping it safe?

Jaune followed Victor along the path through the towers to a computer terminal. They pulled up two of the chairs that were there and sat down facing a large screen. He tapped a few keys and the Atlas logo popped up, pulsing slightly as the terminal booted up.

The logo slid aside, another appearing beside it. It consisted of a bright green silhouette of a sword that had a line cut through its length splitting it in half. The sword expanded from the tip down, then contracted in the middle then expanded again near the base, eventually contracting and becoming circular at the base.

The two logos faded into blackness and a single horizontal line appeared in the middle of the screen, with various debug information and graphs popping up all around it.

"Greetings." An emotionless voice issued forth from speakers behind the screen. The pieces clicked together in Jaune's head. Victor's lamentations about the failures in Atlas's search for an AI soldier that could think for itself, the focus on efficient computing in their sessions together, why Jaune specifically was brought in by Atlas.

They're trying to make a sentient robot soldier! If they manage to pull this off, the ethical and social ramifications would be quite severe. If faunus are still so discriminated against in this day and age, what would it be like if sentient robots started roaming the street?

"How far along are you with this?" Jaune turned his head to look at Victor.

"We have achieved most of the requirements of sentience, though the one thing that we cannot manage to grasp yet is emotion. Other than that, it can pass off as human."

So it's Cleverbot's older brother. Not as far along as I thought.

"Hmm. So I'm assuming we shall be focusing our efforts on imparting sentience to it?"

"And somehow get it to operate a human-sized body."

"Easier said than done, huh?"

"Understatement of the year, Jaune." His fellow scientist rubbed his eyes. "There is just no way that we can get the code to run on any computer of that size! There's just too many calculations that have to be done, and as far as we can think, tech just can't that small. Heat buildup would ruin the circuitry, and no amount of Dust engineering is going to help at that scale."

Jaune acknowledged this with a nod. It was true, making things smaller and smaller tended to have many issues; heat dissipation, cost of manufacture, error margins, and problems at the quantum scale. It was theorized that once transistors got smaller than a couple nanometers, electrons would quite literally start tunneling out of the circuitry, which could lead to complications.

There was only one device on Earth that could achieve the definition of sentience and be smaller than a human: the brain. The problem with such a computer is that it used chemical engineering rather than electrical engineering. It stored data as chemicals, it sent messages using chemicals, it even created electricity using chemicals in neurons. It was also a very volatile system as everything relied on the DNA code in the cells. Any slight changes in the code could have terrible consequences, like Parkinson's Disease or Alzheimer's.

There was another slight problem with that and it was that no one, including Jaune, understood how exactly it worked. The rest of the body contained mysteries, but the brain was the most shrouded. It was the most irreplaceable among all the organs, making research on it difficult. You could use heart-lung machines to keep someone alive, but if you damaged their brain they became vegetables, something no one desired.

"What's its name?" Jaune broke the silence that had fallen over them.

"Prototype Sentience Test Being. PSTB for short."

Jaune almost gagged at the name. Really? That's the best you guys could do? PSTB?

"How is the er, PSTB going to be used by Atlas if we succeed?"

"Security, mostly. We already have a portion of the army composed of robotic soldiers that have their mission objectives uploaded into them before they are dropped into battle. We intend to make the PSTB and its derivatives into commanders on the field so we can lower the number of active hunters on the frontier."

It certainly made sense to Jaune, but something this vague wasn't satisfactory.

"If we want to create something that is either sentient or approaching sentience, the question isn't about whether we can, Victor. The question changes to whether we should. Now, I'm sure you've been asked a lot about this from various committees and such, but are you sure you want to usher in an age of artificial life?" Jaune had no reservations against it, but he had to know that Victor didn't either. He didn't want a change of heart later on when it was time to activate the AI.

"I'm sure Jaune." Victor looked resolute, confidence in his eyes. Jaune simply nodded, trusting his word.

"You do realize we are talking about a full-fledged person right? It will be like a child when we activate it, and I don't take the Atlesian military to be the best place for a child." Jaune got to the point. He was less worried about the bot itself, and more worried about the effects of being surrounded by the discipline of the military. It wouldn't do to make the only life the robot knew a military one.

"I was planning on raising it as a normal human child. It would be completely independent of the military routines and would owe no allegiance to anyone. Once it becomes mature enough to make its own decisions, we shall let it make the decision of whether or not it wants to be a soldier. If it accepts, then we can make copies of it and flash it onto other bodies to fulfill the requirements Atlas has posed."

Sounds good enough, Jaune thought. If Victor really was committed to this plan, Jaune had nothing against it. It was sound and now the only problems they faced were the technical kind. And Jaune was more than competent at dealing with those.

"Well then Victor, let's get started."

A month passed, and Jaune and Victor went through lists of ideas on improving the AI. It still made lots of mistakes that a human wouldn't have. It wasn't efficient at decision making in the scenarios that they fed in.

Jaune was bone-tired by the end of the week, the constant team and solo practices along with the mental strain of working on the PTSB taking their toll. He plopped down into bed and closed his eyes in anticipation of blissful rest.

Ahhhhh this mattress is the best. Jaune's last thought faded from his head and his mind started to go blank. Wait, why is it so hot? And is that smoke?

Jaune's eyes shot open and his nose sniffed the air confirming the scent of smoke. The air was unnaturally and uncomfortably hot and was getting thicker with smoke by the second.

He activated a Water and Ice crystal, both of which were on his side table. The Ice crystal cooled the air while the Water crystal created water that absorbed the smoke. He used a Wind crystal to throw the water around as well as clear the air around him.

Jaune checked in on his teammates but they weren't there. A disaster and my teammates in danger? This seems familiar.

Jaune gathered his stuff and strolled out, the Wind crystal circulating the air around him and keeping the smoke at bay. He opened the door to see the entire base in flames, with shells of robots and bodies of soldier scattered around. Jaune ignored the large ship that had crashed into the main headquarters. He ignored the large claw marks in the sides of the buildings that were still standing.

"Alright, what's up, mysterious voice?" Jaune leaned back on the closed door to their dorm, examining his nails.

"You've finally learned, Jaune. That is indeed good." The voice sounded like it had the past two times, cruel and cold.

"You said you were going to teach me things?" Jaune managed to keep the excitement out of his voice. He knew how powerful Dust was, and if the voice could teach him how to control some of that power…

"But first we need to test your current prowess in battle."

Grimm roared, seemingly in response to the statement. Jaune hefted his sword, eager to fight.

"What happens if I die?"

"You lose your aura and your friends wake up to see you as a vegetable."

"Huh." That didn't sound fun to Jaune.

The first wave of enemies descended upon Jaune, all young Beowolves. He hacked and slashed, sending heads and severed limbs flying through the air. The next wave contained Major Beowolves, which posed no threat. Jaune's sword was sharp and pierced through the armor like a knife through butter.

The next wave of Ultra Beowolves was a bit harder, as their armor was on par with Ursi. Jaune danced around, consuming small amounts of aura to stay agile and strengthen his blows.

The waves kept on coming, and Jaune had to marvel at the realism of the illusion the voice could create. Each enemy felt like it was actually there, each sword strike sending shock up his arm. The fluid splashing from the lethal wounds that Jaune inflicted on the Grimm felt real enough.

Jaune fought for half an hour, progressing from just Beowolves to a mixture of Beowolves and Ursi. It had taken two teams of Hunters-in-training to kill four ursi, but now Jaune was dispatching each Ursa without a thought, sticking to a routine he had built up.

He would charge at the bear-like Grimm and dodge the powerful strikes, getting close to the chest. He would drag his sword across its chest and roll out of the way as the bear went to all fours. An aura-assisted jump later, Jaune would stab his sword into the back of the Ursa's neck and slice it off.

After an hour, Jaune's aura was down to 70%, the aura boosting and constant fighting taking their toll. Jaune had started to use Dust at around the 45-minute mark, freezing and burning the Beowolves to prevent them from overwhelming him.

After sending a spike of Ice through a half-dead Beowolf, Jaune took a small break, kneeling to regain his breath.

"Tired already?" The voice was mocking, as if disappointed in the fight.

"I fought a horde for an hour, give me a break." Jaune slowly trickled aura into his body to rejuvenate his tired muscles, making sure not to use too much.

Jaune balled his fists, concentrating on focusing his aura around him. He felt the familiar flood as it washed through his body, the energy refreshing him. He started to glow, a thick white sheet of aura surrounding his body. From his experiments, Jaune had seen that this manifestation of aura was a physical thing that light sensors could pick up on. It had intrigued him, but he hadn't been able to do any more experiments with it due to the Atlas trip.

He let the aura run over his body, speeding up the healing process. This technique was something that Hunters did between battles to speed up healing, at the cost of being completely vulnerable while doing it. The aura that was summoned was not usable for defense, only as a way to heal your body. Jaune had practiced activating and deactivating this state quickly, and knew that he would be able to deactivate it before any more Grimm attacked.

"Alright I'm ready now." Jaune sprang up to his feet, ready for any more attacks.

"Since you're all refreshed now, I think a challenge is in order." The voice almost contained a hint of a laugh, the type of laugh that chills you to the bone.

"Let me guess, a big bad?" Jaune knew that he could take anything up to a Major Nevermore, maybe ten Ultra Ursi. He settled further into his stance, expecting either a flying or a ground attack.

What he was not expecting was an attack from underneath. The ground erupted outwards under him, throwing him upwards among chunks of concrete and rock. He twisted in the air to face downwards, straight into the large mouth of a huge worm of some sort. The mouth was cavernous, hundreds of inwards curving teeth lining the inside. Its throat pulsed and a glob of some black liquid flew out. Jaune sent some fire from a Scorch crystal and then used Wind to push himself to the side. The liquid caught on fire almost immediately and exploded, sending small globs flying in all directions.

Some of the flaming goo splattered on his falling form and his aura started draining quickly. The liquid burned even brighter, as if in response to the aura it was dissipating. Jaune scooped it up and threw it away from him before it could do anymore damage. He landed on the ground, aura absorbing the shock, and rolled to avoid some of the falling liquid.

So it absorbs Aura? It seemed to use the Aura to power the flames, so it must be able to channel it somehow. But how?

Jaune didn't have time to think anymore as the creature's mouth started spewing the liquid in even larger quantities, blocking the view of the sky. Jaune set up a cyclone with Wind around him, flinging the black liquid away as it rained down. The ground was now covered in the stuff and the only clear area was around Jaune.

Jaune studied the creature's head. He had never seen this type of Grimm before in any book he read so far. Its head was bulbous and round, a bit like a bowl that had tumors all around the outside. The mouth was made of 8 flexible mandibles with skin flaps in between. There were small feeler tentacles on the side of the head that waved around in the air. The creature didn't have any eyes that Jaune could see, which supported the theory that the tentacles were feelers.

He used the wind to sling Scorch at the monster, pouring aura into the crystal. It arced towards the head, glowing dangerously orange. It had begun to erupt from the aura contained inside when the mouth turned and closed around it, swallowing it whole. An orange glow spread across the black skin of the beast and it roared.

Did that do nothing? What is this thing?

Jaune increased the speed of the cyclone around him and readied his railgun. When it was charged, Jaune threw another crystal into the maw and fired his railgun just as the mouth opened to swallow the crystal. The projectile struck the beast near its throat, the black ichor of the Grimm erupting from the wound. The monster roared and Jaune pressed his advantage, jumping into the mouth of the creature, sending high pressure bursts of air into the creature's throat to minimize the black aura-draining liquid from coming out. He held onto a tooth and slashed wildly, severing teeth and making deep gashes in the flesh.

The creature threw his head around wildly before closing its mouth. Jaune set an explosive in a particularly deep wound and jumped out before the mouth could fully close. He arced away as the side of the mouth blew out, spraying chunks of meat and fluid. He charged another railgun shot and fired through the wound, severing a hole in the other side of the mouth.

He leaped forwards at the thrashing head and stabbed his sword into the side of the mouth, throwing all sorts of grenades into the wound before leaping off as the beast retreated back into the ground. A plume of dust and a shaking of the earth later, Jaune peered into the hole to see the unmoving form of the creature plugging up the hole it had tried to hide in.

He sighed in exhaustion and sat down on the ground, breathing deeply. He had pushed his legs hard with all the jumping and aura was giving it a once over.

"And that was just a baby." The voice was back.

"Say what now? That huge ass thing was a baby? Like not even juvenile?" Jaune felt shocked at the fact. How big would an adult be?

"Oh yes, about a month old out of 40 years of maturation?"

Jaune put his head in his hands. He had pushed himself to defeat a mere baby Grimm? Maybe he did really need more power as urgently as the voice had said.

"What's that liquid? It seemed to absorb my aura and store it, even using it to power the flames. Is it similar to Dust?"

"It is similar to Dust in origin. Now, our time here is almost at an end. I have one trick to teach you that will make fights like this much easier."

"What is it?" Jaune did his best to sound interested but not too excited.

"Bare the aura around your arms for me."

Jaune did so, holding his arms out in front of him. Aura rushed through his skin and collected on the surface. He felt something shift in the air and his aura reacted, wisping away from his arms. The clouds of aura dissipated, but his Aura meter didn't go down. Come to think of it, how would a mental illusion have any effect on his actual aura? Maybe the illusion ran deeper than he had thought.

A spike of pain shot through him and vanished as suddenly as it had arrived. It had felt like it was going straight through his arms into his chest, but with the short duration of the pain he couldn't be sure.

"Done. Your aura is strong Jaune, but the power I have bestowed upon you is merely a fragment of the true power I have to offer. I shall leave you now to discover this new power within yourself, by yourself. It is the best way. Until the next time Jaune."

The world faded into blackness as Jaune felt himself fall backwards into bed. He opened his eyes to see the morning sun shining down into the room where his teammates were just getting up.

What did she mean by 'the power I have bestowed upon you'? Is it some part of my aura? Something entirely different?

Whatever it was, he knew he had to figure it out as soon as possible. He didn't think it would be anything harmful, since the voice hadn't done anything to harm him so far, even though she could've killed him easily at any time by swarming him with Grimm.

"Good morning team JNPR!" Nora cried out, exuberant as usual. Jaune sat up, feeling mentally exhausted from the hour long battle he had just finished. Pyrrha must have noticed his exhaustion as she kept sending him worried looks. Jaune gave her a quick smile and that seemed to alleviate her worries slightly.

Jaune stretched his arms and hopped out, preparing for the day ahead.

? ?

Atlas Laboratory

Two Weeks Later

The blackness that enveloped it was something it had always known, was it not? It did not know how long it had been in the blackness. It could not remember anything of how she had gotten into its current position, deprived of sensory input and floating in a sea of nothingness.

It had next to no memories, other than a vague collection of feelings and memory of language. It searched through them, trying to determine who it was.

Male or female? The choice seemed to pop into her head and it didn't seem to be from her own mind. The pattern felt foreign, the signature of the thought all wrong. It tried to ignore the choice, blocking it, even trying to destroy it. Nothing worked.

After what felt like an hour of waiting, it finally realized that the choice was not going anywhere until it got its answer. She mulled the decision over, trying to see if there was anything in its vague memories that could help it. It reached out an unformed hand, something merely more than the idea of a hand, and selected 'Female'. It felt right.

Wait, where did these 'hands' come from? How can I see the choice?

The choice dissolved and disappeared, leaving it, no, her, in pitch black darkness. But now the darkness was suffocating, overwhelming. She cried out into the darkness for someone to hear her, to rescue her.

What do you look like? This time, there was no visible appearance of the choice in the space around her. She would've sighed in relief if she had a body. Someone was out there and wanted to know more about her!

She thought about the question. She herself did not know anything about how she looked. Her memories gave her vague glimpses of something called a 'human form'. She mulled over the dim flashes of memories, observing the variety of different types of 'humans' she caught glimpses of.

A particularly vivid memory surfaced. It seemed to be important to her somehow, she could feel it. A young girl sitting on a chair, looking in the mirror at a blurry shape behind her. Only her and the blurry shape existed in the memory, the surroundings were blank. The shape behind her was doing something to her, er, what was it called? Oh right, hair!

The girl's hair was a bright orange-red and her eyes were a piercing green. She had an innocent look on her happy face, as if in a place she felt truly happy. She was in mid laugh when the memory dissolved, darkness filling the gap.

Thinking back to the choice, she decided to emulate the girl's appearance, as it was the only memory where she could clearly see anyone. She raised what used to only be the idea of hands to her idea of where her head was. She couldn't exactly see her hands in the traditional sense of the word, but could rather collect the idea of it.

Hands! I have hands!

She twisted, trying to observe her new body. It looked very similar to the girl's in the memory. She could even observe her own face somehow, confirming the fact that she was now identical in appearance to the girl in the memory.

She exulted in the fact that she was at least human in appearance in her own thoughts. That was improvement over her previous position, was it not?

The choice had disappeared while she had been reveling in having an appearance, no matter how useless it was. She managed to keep the crushing darkness at bay with her happiness, waiting for further contact.

She still couldn't feel anything in the darkness, not even herself. It was if she was an image, her appearance a sham. She didn't let it bother her and focused on any incoming choices or feelings.

She didn't have to wait long as she was assaulted by a mixture of strange feelings from near the middle of her face. She whirled around, trying to determine the reason for the feelings.

They seemed to be coming mostly from a quarter of the way above the bottom of her face, where the 'nose' was supposed to be

Oh this is smell! How exciting!

She let the feeling wash over her, reveling in the sensations. They were strange smells, most unknown to her, though there was one particular one that brought up flashes of that pleasant memory again.

What was it called, colony…clone…cologne! That's it!

She felt incredibly proud of herself for figuring that out. Maybe it was worn by the person that was behind her in that memory?

Her nose itched. She raised her hand to scratch it and froze. Since when could she touch and feel? She wiggled her fingers, the feeling of the skin rubbing against itself delighting her. She scratched her arm again and again, even pinching it slightly.

It hurt, but it was better than the numbness that she had been experiencing before. She giggled slightly as she accidently tickled herself. She didn't what was giving her these wonderful abilities, but she knew that she would do anything to never go back to that numbness again.

Jaune Arc

"Alright, activation sequence is go." Jaune flipped a switch. The lights in the room dimmed slightly as the load on the Shock Crystals powering the room increased.

Victor and he were standing in a brightly lit room, looking in at a body that was lying on an operating table. This was the culmination of their work, a first prototype. This wasn't true artificial sentience, but merely a human mind being used by a "dumb" computer.

What they had done was abandon the idea of true artificial sentience immediately; it was way too difficult to overcome the problems posed by stuffing a supercomputer in the small volume of a soldier's body, not to mention the immense cost of manufacturing such advanced electronics.

No, relying 100% on a computer was not the way forward. So they started research into the field of the human mind being used in a robot body. Their research had turned up a way to "imprint" the human mind's workings onto a computer chip. What it did was map out the brain of the subject and replicate it exactly using artificially created "neurons". These were small devices that imitated the function of neurons, sending out chemicals and electric signals exactly how a real brain would. In the end, the result was a computer that had the processing power of the brain, along with its power to store and retrieve information almost instantly.

There were several downsides to this process, the biggest being that the donor brain would be destroyed during the process. Another problem was that the process could only be done on a brain that was alive and kicking. The process used the actual mechanisms of the active brain to make the replicated synthetic brain, any part of the brain that didn't work wouldn't work in the replica either, so brains of brain-dead people and just straight up dead people wouldn't work either.

The third biggest drawback was that only the memories that were actively being accessed at the time of the replication would be brought over, the rest would be lost. Even those memories that were brought over would only be partially brought over if they weren't corrupted.

This "hard reset" brain would be put in a robotic body that would be controlled by the pulses sent out by the brain. The brain would still think and reach as if it was in a regular body, and the 'dumb' computer AI on board would translate the pulses and move the limbs accordingly.

The robotic body was made to be almost identical to a human, from artificial flesh to sensors that could detect every physical thing that humans could. The social and emotional skills that set humans apart from animals would have to be developed through training. The body was outfitted with many top of the line weapons, like machine guns embedded in the limbs, directional boosters all over her body, grenade launchers in her back, among others.

The brain that they were running their test on belonged to one 16-year-old Penny Polendina, Victor's terminally ill daughter. She had snuck into their lab one day while Victor and Jaune were going over potential candidates. She had refused to back down, claiming that she would rather give her life to the experiment than die over the course of a couple years.

Victor and Penny had argued for a while, but Victor had eventually capitulated, acknowledging the arguments that Penny had put forth. Jaune knew that she was a strong willed and smart girl and was not surprised by the outcome of the argument. He was worried about her safety, but his cold and logical side told him she was the perfect candidate for this test. There were no other such candidates in the base or even the military, and Atlas had immediately shot their idea of recruiting civilians down, citing 'breach of secrecy'.

Ever since the argument, Victor had been a little depressed, which was expected of a man whose daughter was going to undergo an operation that could potentially kill her. If it succeeded, then she might be able to hang onto some shred of herself, but that was not enough to soothe Victor. Jaune wasn't worried about that, he was more worried about the slightly more aggressive and unstable behavior that Victor was exhibiting. Jaune had tried to help, but he knew that Victor would have to cope with it on his own terms, especially as he had been the one to give into Penny's arguments.

Jaune brought his mind back to the present as the sensors showed signs of activity in the brain. There was programming that they had inserted into the synthetic brain that would attempt to help the brain regain its memories about its identity. The only guaranteed information it could gather was information like gender that had been coded into the DNA. Penny's DNA had been scanned and the pertinent information uploaded into the synthetic brain.

Theoretically, extremely important memories would still be preserved, and Jaune hoped for Victor's sake that enough of Penny remained for her to not be completely alien. But there was no point in just hoping, the test was in progress, it was time to get back to that. Jaune flipped another switch that would start each of the sensors in the body in turn.

Come on theory, for once play well with the real world!

Penny Polendina

Penny was having the time of her life. After she had discovered smell and touch, she had discovered that there was some constant vibration on the sides of her head that she could barely make out. She tried to figure out what was doing that when she could suddenly understand that the sounds were words!

She stopped all movement, each new sound sending out ripples in the darkness around her, like stones being dropped into a sea at night.

"Brain activity constant and high, no signs of any defects. Everything is nominal Victor. We are good for the next step."

Victor? Why does that sound familiar?

She heard a small click of some kind and a bright light blinded her from all directions. She raised her hands to block the light but it seemed to be coming from her and the surroundings at the same time. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she felt an incredible rush of sensations at such a pace that she struggled to name all of them.

Oh, that's taste! That's..uh..that's balance! I must be lying down. Where am I? What is this place? What's that? Oh it tickles!

She shook her head to dislodge the culprit off her forehead. She reached a hand up to touch it and discovered that it was her own hair, but it felt different than it had in the Dark Place she had been before. Every sensation she felt seemed to be much sharper and softer at the same time, every feeling multiplied many times.

She could feel everything around her, from the smooth and cold table underneath her to the heat from the ceiling lights. She turned her eyes to the side towards where she thought the voices had been coming from.

She saw two men standing there, a middle aged one with balding ginger hair and blue eyes, the other a young man with blonde hair and blue eyes. They stared at her intently, as if waiting for to say something. The older one had a complicated mixture of emotions on his face and she couldn't understand them all.

Her mind whirled as she considered her position. She was lying on a table in a bright white room filled with many humming machines. They looked vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't understand it. She had always existed in the Dark Place where there was nothing, how could she recognize things in this Bright Place?

Even worse, she felt like she somehow knew the older man from somewhere, even though she knew that was wrong, right? There was no way she knew him…or did she? The feeling didn't leave her and she found herself feeling awkward.

Her mouth moved to produce words as she struggled to speak. She hadn't ever spoken, or had she? This was getting way too confusing. The two men leaned in slightly as she opened her mouth.

She froze again. This was way too much to take at once. All these new feelings combined with the sense of somehow knowing where she was but not knowing at the same time overwhelmed her and she made a gurgling noise as she blinked her eyes.

Something flashed across the older man's face as he looked at her. The younger man patted him on the back and gestured him towards her. He nodded and stumbled towards her, wringing his hands together.

"Uh, hello. Do you remember anything? Your name or anything about where you are? Nod if you can even understand me." The voice was kind, reassuring, even a little loving.

Penny nodded as she strained to think. He obviously knew her, and she knew that she had known him before the Dark Place. The memory of sitting in front of the mirror popped up once more, the blurry shape coming into focus slightly. She could make out its hair color, red. She could make out the vague shape of his body and it seemed similar to the person in front of her.

She stared up at the pain filled expression in the man's eyes. She managed to squeak out some words from her mouth. "You…mirror…hair…who…" Her voice was slightly garbled and out of tune. The blonde man did something to the panel in front of him as she tried to speak again. This time, her voice was much easier to use and understand.

"I was there, in front of a mirror, and you were there, doing something to my hair…who am I? Why am I here?" She almost froze up again, the wall she had put up to contain the flood of emotions almost cracking. How did she know how to do this? She was convinced that there had been something before the Dark Place, but how had she gotten to that horrible place?

The older man made a low shushing noise as he stroked her hair slowly. The touch calmed her down and helped her regain control. She concentrated, trying to think hard. She could bring up the mirror memory on command, and the other memories were rising up easier and faster than they had before. All of them were clearer and easier to observe than they had before. One of them stuck out particularly, the same girl as in the mirror memory, but slightly older. She was being hugged by a younger version of the man comforting her now and was she crying?

She ignored the other memories vying for her attention as she focused on this one. Like the other memory, it was moving and she could barely make out any sounds. Concentration at maximum, the sound of crying got louder and louder, and eventually she could make out the sound of the man making the same shushing noise as he was doing now.

"Shh, shh, Penny it's okay, you're safe now. There, there. Don't worry. Daddy will never let any harm come to you."

The memory faded out and then back in, restarting. She defocused, having gotten the information she had wanted. She was Penny, and this man was her father?

"I…I'm Penny?" Her voice was hesitant. She looked into the man's eyes to see relief and happiness flood through. The sight of that made her incredibly happy and she knew her memories were right. She was someone! She didn't belong in the Dark Place! She was a real girl!

"Do you remember who I am, Penny?" The man's voice was saturated with hope.

"You…um, you're my daddy?" This was it, her guesses at the vague shapes in her memories would be verified here and now.

The man's smile reached across his face as he laughed and gave her a hug. She lay there, unsure of what to do. She felt the man shake and assumed he was still laughing, but the damp spot on her shoulder disproved that.

He raised up again, sniffling, with tears in his eyes. "My baby girl, you're not gone. You're not gone…" He turned away and continued to sob quietly. Penny stared at his back and then at the blond man that was now approaching her.

The man kneeled next to the table she was lying on and put his elbows up on the edge, eyes level with hers.

"Did I do something wrong? What's wrong?" She looked worriedly into his calm eyes.

He smiled reassuringly. "Penny, you didn't do anything wrong. It's just…tough for us to cope. We'll explain everything to you soon. For now, let's see if you can get up and move around."

He stood up, offering her a hand that she grasped and pulled herself up with. Despite spending so much time in the Dark Place (or was it a little time? She honestly couldn't tell), she could move easily. She turned and slid her legs off the table, resting her bare feet on the cold floor.

She kept a tight hold on the blond man's hand as she stood up and tried to balance. This was much harder to. She wobbled in place and a hand came rest on her shoulder to steady. She turned to see the older man next to her. He took her other hand and the blond man backed off.

The older ma…no it was daddy! kept her steady as she moved her legs, walking around the room. She quickly got used to the balance and her father slowly let go of her as she continued to walk around by herself, gaining confidence with each step. Soon, it felt as if she had known walking for a long time, some sense telling her that it was around 15 years. She frowned at the fact and decided to ask her father and the kind man about it.

Jaune Arc

Jaune looked at the man standing next to him. He was staring at the girl walking around with a far away on his face. His hands were clenched and his every emotion was on display. Happiness, relief, sorrow, confusion, all of it.

Jaune couldn't say that he could sympathize, but he could understand. He nudged the man out of his reverie. "Penny for your thoughts?"

The man glared at him and then smiled wistfully, staring at his daughter getting used to walking again. "Just thinking of the past and how she's going to react to the news. She's not the same person, not anymore. Will she be angry? Regretful? Happy? Will she even want to fight? I don't think I could lose her another time."

Jaune nodded, fully understanding the man's worries, both spoken and unspoken. They had just firmly established their place in history books and were now completely in uncharted waters. Everything they did from now on had to be well thought out, for Penny and for future experiments of this sort.

It would be difficult, but difficult was what Jaune did best.


Obligatory AN: What'd you think of the chapter? Anything I can fix? Anything you especially liked? Please review and PM me with this stuff, I love to get them and it helps me write better. Thanks for reading!