Disclaimer: I own neither Digimon nor RWBY
"What… is she doing?" Ironwood queried as he watched Penny stand in front of a mirror.
"Sir. I think she is… making faces? Maybe practicing expressions?" One of the soldiers currently escorting the artificial girl replied.
"I see… how long has she been doing this?"
The general wasn't sure, but she seemed a bit… dissatisfied? Perhaps at how well she was able to make expressions?
"A couple of hours now, sir. Honestly, if I may be frank, I think I've seen her emote better in the last hour than the entire time I have been part of her escort." The other soldier currently escorting her said.
"Is that so?" Ironwood responded.
But even while he said so his mind raced. It was odd. They'd been struggling for quite some time with improving Penny's emoting, but… well… despite having used to be… there was always just a tiny bit of wrongness, in her speech and expressions.
Perhaps not enough to alert the unaware, but quite noticeable to those who knew of her true nature…
But…
He'd noticed.
Recently, she had changed. Become more… human.
Of course, that was good. They wanted to create an artificial human.
It was just… as far as Ironwood knew, no major improvements had been made recently.
So why?
"Sir?" The general was brought out of his thoughts by one of the soldiers.
"What is it?"
"Nothing… sir. It's just… you were standing there…"
"I was merely lost in thought. There is nothing you need to worry about. Continue to monitor Penny."
The last thing Ironwood saw Penny do before he left was try to look at her own back.
There wasn't really anything to see there, and she should be aware of that, but even so she did.
-Break—
A nice day, and she gets to go out!
Penny was quite happy about that.
Not so much that she still has an escort, albeit this time an Atlesian student named Ciel Soleil, a slightly dark-skinned girl with blue eyes.
They are supposed to be team-mates, or at least pretend to be, although Ciel doesn't even know what Penny really is…
Although frankly Penny was sort of also starting to question that herself…
Well, it was still better than having two stoic soldiers following her, if only because it drew far less attention.
Now she only had one stoic girl to deal with.
But all in all, Penny had been enjoying herself up till now.
"Hello miss. You seem interesting." A far too innocent voice suddenly interrupted.
The two 'team-mates' turned their gazes towards the origin.
And found a child.
Quite young, to the point where you would wonder if it was alright for him to be walking about alone, much less starting conversations with strangers.
Blonde hair, pristine pale skin…
Penny felt like she had seen something like that before…
An unusual marking also adorned the child's face…
He was clad in black and white clothes, pretty simple ones, a pair of pants and a dress shirt.
Everything about him seemed like a small, perhaps quite well-off, ordinary child…
She what was this dread she was feeling? Deep down in her core…
"What do you want? Me and my team-mate here are currently looking around Vale, we-" Ciel started.
"I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to your 'friend'." The child said with all the innocent honesty of a child, pointing at Penny.
"Did your parents never tell you not to approach random strangers?" Penny responded with a kind smile.
"But you're students from one of the Academies, right? Huntresses-in-training! There's no way you are bad people!" The child's enthusiasm made it hard to refute him, and it seemed Ciel was at a complete loss for words.
Penny couldn't help but chuckle a bit. "Well, alright, I'm Penny, and this is Ciel. What's your name?"
"I'm Luke! I'm also exploring Vale right now!"
"Your first time here?"
"Yep!" Luke's smile was so radiant Penny could have sworn it actually lit up the area around him.
"What's that… marking on your face?" She couldn't quite help but bring it up.
It worried her a little. It was quite out of place on a child like Luke, and she couldn't help but worry it had been put there against his will.
"This? I've had since birth! It's just part of who I am!"
"Really? That's a relief. But… should you really be running around alone?"
"Oh, you don't need to worry about me! They're waiting for me just around the corner!" Luke dismissed it without missing a beat, before suddenly becoming slightly concerned. "Oh right! They're waiting for me! See you again!"
And with that he ran off, and for just a few moments Penny glimpsed an entirely unfitting expression on his face.
Appraising and calculating, stoking that indescribable unease.
But it was so fleeting and momentary, that she had to question if it ever happened at all.
"Ma'am? What just happened?" Ciel suddenly asked.
"I don't really know."
Honestly, that entire interaction almost felt like a dream.
The question then was, was it a normal dream, or was it a nightmare?
She couldn't quite discern the answer.
Not to mention, it most certainly happened…right?
-Break—
"It certainly seems like two-on-one is the most certain bet for victory against a Child level…" V-mon mused.
"One-on-one does seem manageable though, if too close for comfort." Huckmon added.
In the meanwhile, an exhausted team RWBY stared at the two with varying degrees of questioning gazes.
"Are… you sure… about that? Because we are… the ones… all tapped out… while you two don't seem tired at all." Ruby said.
"Well, we don't get tired the same way you do. And we aren't exactly your average Child-level Digimon…" Huckmon replied.
"Then what about an Adult-level, do you think the four of us could take one on?" Weiss queried.
"I'd say it depends on the Digimon in question, the range of power does vary quite heavily…" V-mon said.
"If all things go in your favour, terrain, initiative and the like, and your opponent is one of the weaker Adults… you could win." The other Digimon added.
"Really? How much more powerful is the average Adult-level compared to the average Child-level?" Blake asked.
"Evolution provides an exponential increase in power. As a general rule of thumb a Child will never be able to defeat an Adult, although… exceptions do exist…" The blue Digimon replied.
"Exceptions?" Yang said.
"Some Adults are unusually weak, while there are… a few Childs that are exceptionally strong…" Huckmon answered.
"And… then there is Lucemon…" V-mon said.
"The Demon Lord of… Pride?" Weiss queried.
"Lucemon is an oddity amongst Digimon. As a Child, Lucemon is able to fight even Perfect-level Digimon and win, and it goes straight to Perfect-level when it evolves into Falldown Mode, which is what we actually mean when talking about the Demon Lord of Pride…" V-mon explained.
"And Falldown Mode is considered the equal of its Demon Lord brethren… who are amongst the most powerful Ultimate-level Digimon…" Huckmon finished.
"Okay… that sounds… terrifying… But, hang on… you say Evolution but… from what I've seen and heard it doesn't exactly match what we mean when we talk about evolution." Blake said.
Everyone looked at the cat-Faunus.
"She has a point. I have to agree that the word Evolution doesn't seem to describe the actual process well…" Weiss added after a short while.
The two Digimon looked at each other, clearly unsure what to say.
"Well… who knows? We aren't exactly the brainiest members of the Royal Knights… that would be Alphamon and Duftmon." V-mon said.
"But… I suppose we could call it a… failure in the translation?" Huckmon continued.
"Wait… failure in the translation? What translation?" Yang queried.
"We Digimon do have a language of our own… its just that we are using your language to make things easier on you. And it might simply be that the translation doesn't work out perfectly." The saurian Digimon replied.
"Maybe we should make up a new word. Something like… digital… hmm… evolution…" Ruby said and started thinking.
"Please stop, you're embarrassing yourself. And us." Weiss said, stopping Ruby before she could say something stupid.
"But… I… Aww…" The team-leader seemed to get quite dejected.
"There, there Rubes." Yang said, clapping her younger sister on the shoulder.
"Honestly, at the end of the day it doesn't matter that much what it is called." Blake suddenly said.
This caused everyone to look at the raven-haired girl, causing her to utter a confused; "What?"
-Break—
It was all wrong.
Everything was wrong.
Roman… wasn't himself anymore.
It was like his greed had overflowed, overwriting his sense of caution and all semblance of sanity!
She wanted to say it was the fault of that… demon he had brought and was now working with him, but she knew…
It had started even before then.
Besides, that being was hardly devious, and certainly not greedy.
The plan that Roman had concocted didn't seem like it came from that… battle-maniac.
No, it was…
There was…
Certainly something was pulling the strings there.
She'd felt it. Growing with every day, a presence from Roman not entirely unlike the one from that monster… Beelzebumon.
She needed to get out of the city.
She wasn't getting pulled into whatever was going to happen there, be it from the plans of that mad-woman and whoever was pulling her strings…
Or the plans from Roman and whatever had started pulling his strings.
Or, well… those plans clashing while other groups within Vale also got involved.
It was guaranteed to be a glorious clusterfuck, and the idea of making a mess like that had drawn her to join in but…
The forces behind this were all just a little too dark for her tastes, and she was starting to feel like she had good reason to escape now, before…
Before she actually succumbed to the darkness that monster stirred in her.
Because something told her there was no coming back from it.
She moved swiftly though the night, evading the few people still around.
Hopefully she would be well out of the city before they could notice she had split…
She narrowed her eyes in annoyance as she gazed into the streets.
Atlesian Knights.
Leave it to something like that to be patrolling regardless of the time of day.
To say that Ironwood's ever-growing little army of mechanical puppets where putting her at ease would be a total lie.
After all, she knew that they had been compromised.
And she was getting an increasingly bad feeling that something was following her.
She turned to move on, only to find herself face to face with the blank glass pane that served as the face of the Knights.
"Hello little human." It spoke, unusually clearly for a Knight. "The master does not wish you to leave just yet."
The earlier feeling returned, and she realised that whatever was speaking to her was the thing following her.
She started to make a move to disable the machine and get away, but she was suddenly wrapped in a chain that appeared in the Knight's hand out of nowhere.
"And no, this is not negotiable. Resistance will only necessitate violence, and I cannot guarantee your survival."
And with this ominous line, delivered with a voice best described as 'from beyond the grave', a scythe materialized in its other hand.
-Break—
On a distant rooftop a small child observed as this unfolded with a curious gaze and mischievous smile.
"Well, isn't that interesting. I wonder who called it. This seems like it could be far more interesting than originally anticipated."
Messing around with humans and… whatever that little doll from before was, certainly had promise, but everything got so much more interesting when you threw a couple wildcards into the mix.
There was no way it was missing this opportunity.
Its Pride wouldn't allow it.
Author's notes: Well, this chapter is quite due I believe. The bit about 'Evolution' and how unfitting the term is if you consider what evolution actually is and the answer given, are actually thoughts I have had on the matter before, although more relating to Japanese and the translation from there. Technically it is certainly the correct translation but... is that really what they meant? Probably. But you never quite know. The Japanese word 進化(ShinKa) uses the symbols for 'progression' and 'change', so they might be using it to refer to a 'progressive change into a new(presumably stronger) being'. This holds true for both Pokémon's and Digimon's use of the term. But that is really just me trying to look at it from an angle that makes sense without it being about misunderstanding how evolution works. Just a thought.
Oh, and feedback on the chapter and direction of the story is always welcome.
I hope you enjoyed, and that you have a nice day.