"We're not leaving," Vasily said firmly affixing a bandage upon one of the many lacerations Arc had given him across his body. His aura was beginning to heal him but for the moment he was going to help his body along, thankfully it wasn't anything that would be healed after a long day of rest, he would be ready for tonight.
"We're wanted!" Bonnie pleaded as if that would sway him.
"We were wanted before, I fail to see how things have changed," he said inspecting his handiwork, doubtlessly he would have scars to help commemorate this fight.
"Not like this," she said to him, "before we weren't on the countries ten most wanted list." She explained to him, "It was one thing knowing we were on Ironwood's radar, that was bad enough already, but now police, huntsmen, everyone is looking for us and it's only a matter of time before they find out."
"How high are we on that list?" He asked, finding the thought amusing.
"Number eight," Bonnie said, "the bounty hasn't been posted quite yet."
He frowned. Only number eight? Still that would be quite a substantial sum on his head. "Then we have time, and I only will need until tonight," he assured her.
Bonnie shrank as he faced her looking at her shudder in fear at him. "Please," she said, "I am just worried this this is getting out of hand, stealing Penelope was bad enough already."
"I can kill Arc this time!" He assured her, "I know exactly where I need to do it, it will end soon."
Bonnie frowned, "Even if you can get him to come to you-,"
"He will come!" Vasily growled, he was getting tired of her objections. "I know him, I know his weaknesses and I know just how to end this."
Bonnie nodded to him slow and careful, "alright, he will come to fight you, but what will stop him from brining his friends? All of Atlas is ready to fight you, how can you expect to get the same kind of one on one showdown you need?"
Vasily grinned at her, he watched as it sent shivers down her spine. "Stupid Bonnie," he said, "I've already worked that all out, it's the same as it's always been we'll create a distraction."
Bonnie frowned at him, "It will have to be a very big distraction if you want to escape notice this time."
Vasily grinned even wider, "oh it will be," he said, "I think it's time I met face to face with my employer."
Jaune opened his eyes to look upon Pietro's workshop. He didn't want to go back to the academy, despite his wounds the last thing he wanted to do was leave Penny's side, Pietro had agreed and offered him the use of a couch so once his cuts were patched up he had waited and despite his best efforts had fallen asleep.
He checked the time on his scroll. It was half past noon. He also had a dozen messages from Ren and Nora and Team RWBY. He ignored them, the last thing he wanted to do was talk to them.
His sleep had been restless. He constantly woke up and found himself rethinking everything that had transpired. Gods he was such an idiot.
Penny could be rebuilt, he had known that logically of course. But he hadn't quite been thinking logically when he had thrown himself against Vasily had he? A dreadful feeling that was far too familiar to him had taken a hold of him, he had felt it when he lost Pyrrha, and like when that feeling had resurfaced confronting Cinder he had thrown himself against the object of his hatred and almost died, or worse had Weiss killed.
How could he be so stupid? So damned emotional and childish. Would Penny be happy having learned that he had gotten killed trying to avenge her before she could be repaired? He imagined her trying to scold him for it and the thought actually put a smile on his face, just the thought that she would come back to possibly scold him for being so momumentally idiotic was comforting.
The comfort was fleeting however. Knowing that she wasn't completely taken away from him was nice but it did little to comfort the knowledge that Vasily was still at large. He sat up and looked around the humble home, he wouldn't have been able to guess that this living room belonged to one of the greatest minds in the tech capital of the world.
He looked onto the coffee table where he had set down Crocea Mors and his battered shield. They were currently missing and he guessed that Pietro had probably taken them for repairs. He really needed to do something about that gun of his smashing up his shield.
He stood up and walked across the humble living room for his workshop. He knocked trying to be respectful of Pietro's privacy.
"Come in," Pietro said from the other side of the door.
Jaune stepped in and Pietro turned from his work. "Glad to see you on your feet," he said motioning over to a small kitchenette, "there's tea if you want," he said indicating a kettle.
Jaune nodded numbly and gave a look over to a workbench in the middle of the shop. A blanket modestly covered her nudity. "How is she?" he asked moving to pour himself a cup of hot water and grabbed a bag of early grey dunking it into the steaming cup.
"I'll try to spare you the technical details, but she is coming along well," he told him, picking up his own mug and taking a sip wof what smelled like chai. "Her memory storage was undamaged so currently her memory is being uploaded and being readied to be transferred into her new body."
Jaune stared at her on the bed, she looked like she was asleep and awaiting surgery. "You're not going to use this body?" he asked him.
"I am," Pietro explained, "that's Penelope's body, despite certain internal and external damage it is relatively intact. I had to replace the internal battery, it seems that the kill switch that the assassin used fired it, killing her directly."
Jaune nodded, the thought of Penny inhabiting the same vessel that needlessly slaughtered all those people was unsettling but he wasn't about to argue with Pietro. He tried telling himself it was just a body nothing more.
"What about Penelope?" He asked him, tentatively taking a sip of the hot tea.
"What about her?" Pietro asked coldy.
"Her mind is still in there," Jaune told him, "Isn't it?"
Pietro set his tea down, "It won't be once I finish extracting it," he explained to him, "I'm going extract her positronic brain and fit her with a new one, the one Ironwood fitted her with was flawed, it was hardly capable of feeling much of anything."
That made sense to Jaune. That coldness she had eluded wasn't just Vasily's handiwork it seemed. "It just seems so pointless," Jaune said, staring at the lifeless automaton.
"It is pointless," Pietro said to him, "I don't know if Ironwood had her brain constructed poorly or if he wanted a version of Penny that wouldn't feel so emotional, but what he did in the end was create a being unable to feel much and let her fall into the hands of a sociopath, I always feared that he only ever viewed Penny as a tool and it seems he was doing just that."
Jaune nodded in agreement. Through the cloud of numbness that fogged his brain he felt his anger rising at Ironwood, right now he was trying to cover up for the attacks and destruction left in Vasily's and Penelope's wake. "He has a lot to answer for," Jaune said, taking a gulp of his steaming tea.
"He does," Pietro agreed, "Sadly I need his funding to continue my work and maintain Penny, but I am going to find out everything I can about this little side project and shut it down."
"That shouldn't be hard now considering the media storm," Jaune said, finding a cold pleasure knowing that the General wasn't escaping from his actions.
Pietro sighed, "True, but I am worried about what this can be doing to Penny's image, he's explained that it wasn't Penny who murdered those people and caused all that destruction and has credited Penny for stopping Penelope, but seeing the destruction Penny is capable of has made everyone uneasy."
Jaune could accept that lie, if everyone believed that it was Penny who stopped Penelope's storm of destruction all the better. It was certainly a more flattering tale than to learn that the man who orchestrated all of this had ended it with the press of a button. "We can deal with that later," Jaune said, "right now the only thing I can worry about is getting her back."
Pietro gave him a small smile, "It's nice to know that you care so much about her."
"Well I am her boyfriend," he said, realizing that this was the first time he was talking to Pietro as Penny's boyfriend. He supposed that this was what counted as meeting his girlfriend's parents. He would have taken a million different awkward dinners compared to this.
"That's exactly what I am talking about," he told him, "I always wanted Penny to make friends and form human relationships, as a father and a scientist it is something I have been observing with fascination and pride." He explained to him, "Penny's positronic brain is a marvel of engineering able to give her superhuman cognition and still be able to feel. Her mental and social development are to be studied as well as nurtured, and here she has on her own developed romantic feelings for you and you in turn for her, so much so you refused to leave here until you saw that she was better with your own two eyes."
Jaune scratched the back of his head, "I'm sorry about that," he apologized, "I was just upset and I shouldn't have imposed on you," he remembered arguing with Ruby about leaving Penny in Pietro's care and going back to the academy for some rest that he had no interest in. Pietro had settled the argument by saying Jaune could rest on his couch, a proposition Jaune hadn't intended to follow until his exhaustion had won and sent him into a shallow dreamless sleep.
Pietro laughed, "I'm glad you imposed, her boyfriend should impose himself when he's worried about her," he said with a friendly warm grin, "Penny needs friends, any people that will look out for her and her well being, because I might not always be able to."
"Why do you say that?" Jaune asked him, his brow furrowing. Sure Pietro was up there in years and was stuck in a mechanical chair but he didn't appear ill to Jaune.
"Do you know how I was able to give life to Penny?" He asked him seriously, "How I gave her a soul? Gave her emotions?"
Jaune shook his head silently. He had idly wondered how a machine could be able to feel such much but he had always decided that such things were beyond his understanding.
"I gave her a fraction of my aura, my very soul, it brought life to her, it powered her positronic brain and developed into a soul of it's own," he explained, "but at the cost of fracturing my own soul."
Jaune processed that with a drink of tea, he thought about that and the implications it brought. "So what you're saying is that you don't know how many times you can bring her back with your aura," Jaune said.
He nodded sadly, "my soul can only be fractured so many times, it's not a precise science but but even this might be my last time," he explained to him, "I've made preparations should this happen, I know Atlas has the knowledge and facilities to maintain her upkeep as we have unfortunately seen," he said motioning to Penelope's body showing just how grossly they had abused that.
"But you could die!" Jaune said.
"Any good parent would do the same," Peitro said, "but that's why I am happy to know that Penny has made friends and even a boyfriend, I just want to know that when I am gone she will have people to help watch out for her, and stick up for her. So when it comes to her well being Jaune I want you to impose as much as possible."
He smiled at bit at that but it did little to stop the sinking feeling in his stomach. Bringing Penny back came at a price, it wasn't free she wasn't immortal saving her meant sacrificing a piece of Pietro's very soul, perhaps the last piece he had left. And he was sitting here getting ready to die with a smile on his face almost unperturbed.
"Can I ask you a question?" He said.
"Ask as many as you want," Pietro answered him.
"If you had to sacrifice your aura a second time to bring Penny back, does that mean she had a different soul when she was in Beacon? Will she have a different soul now? Will she even be the same person?"
"That is a good question," Pietro asked, "Tell me Jaune what is a soul?"
That stumped him as he didn't really have an answer he thought would be meaningful. "I uh, I guess it's a person's essence," it was a lame answer he knew and he hoped that Pietro didn't follow up by asking what a person's essence was.
"And what is a person's essence?" He asked.
Shit.
"I don't really know," Jaune admitted thinking that this conversation could quickly spiral.
"It's a question I don't have an exact answer too myself," Pietro answered him, "Aura is the essence of our souls but that doesn't help, I suppose you could ask a spiritualist or a priest and they might give you something more to our satisfaction, but let me ask you, if I built two Penny's and uploaded both bodies with the same memoires and brought them online which would be Penny?"
That sent Jaune's head spinning, "I don't know, both I suppose, I mean if they developed different memories over time they would be different people but at first I have no idea."
Pietro chuckled, "exactly, perhaps she will be a different Penny with a different soul but quantifying that is rather tricky, Penny was changed after the Vytal Tournament, but who wouldn't be? But to me she was still my little girl, I cannot comment on her soul, what truly makes a person themselves is something for philosophers to debate but when she comes back online I can tell you she will have the same memories, she will still think of everyone as a friend, still see you as her boyfriend and will still be the Protector of Mantle. If the souls of her previous incarnations have left this world to some immiteral I don't know, but maybe what truly makes Penny Penny is within her memories and the confines of her positronic brain."
"Like her soul actually exists within a computer?" Jaune asked, finding the idea a little hard to imagine, as if everything that made Penny special could be boiled down to a bunch of ones and zeros.
"Is it so strange to think of it like that?" Pietro asked him, "our brains are computers in their own ways, everything that makes a person a person exists in a collection of electrical signals and hormones within our skulls, but at the same time we see our Aura and know that there is much much more to it."
"That's a lot to take in," Jaune admitted.
Pietro smiled down at Penny, "She is my greatest creation, she does not only test the bounds of science but philosophy as well, she has given me a thousand questions to what life truly is."
Jaune set his empty mug down, "Then use my aura," he told him.
A silence stretched between them as Pietro starred at Jaune. "That isn't something you should be offering lightly Jaune."
"You think I don't understand that?" Jaune asked him, "but you could die if you do this and I have aura to spare."
"If you do this then you probably won't have any Aura to spare," he told him, "your semblance could become detrimental to, you will be weakening yourself for every fight to come."
"But I can save you," he told him, "and I can save Penny, surely that's worth it."
Pietro steeled his face, "would you sacrifice an arm or a leg to save another person?" Pietro asked him, "would you risk your career as a huntsmen, I am not a fighter or a huntsman Jaune, I didn't risk jeopardizing my entire future by doing this."
"I risk my life and everything I fight!" Jaune snapped at him, "I don't have any assurances whenever I fight someone, I could lose an arm or a leg or even my head, so yeah I am ready to sacrifice a part of myself to save Penny, to save you or anyone ese I might know!"
Pietro's eyes swelled with sadness, Jaune realized that perhaps he had spoken a little too harshly at him. "I'm sorry," Jaune said, "but I was powerless to stop Penny from getting hurt and I don't want you to be the one to face the consequences for that. How do you think Penny will feel if she wakes up to find that you've been taken from her? How am I supposed to explain that I could have done something to save you, to save everyone."
Pietro averted his gaze, "But you're so young, it isn't fair."
Jaune shook his head, "no it isn't fair, but that doesn't mean it isn't good or that it isn't right," he told him stepping forward, "After Penny and I got back from the first time that psycho tried to kill us she told me that my life was more valuable, that she was just a machine build to protect others and that I shouldn't have risked myself for her. How can I accept that? So many people count on her, and I'm just the loser that had to fake my way into Beacon, I'd tear a limb off anyday to protect that, it's more good than I could ever hope to bring into this world."
Pietro sighed, "Do you love her?" He asked.
The question threw Jaune off balance, he hadn't expected that to come out. "We just started dating sir," he told him honestly, "I care about her, she's a friend, a girlfriend, but I don't know if I can say we're in love yet, but it doesn't matter. I'd do the same for Ruby or Weiss or any member of my team," he told him, "I don't want to lose anyone, not if I can help it!"
Pietro nodded, "alright," he told him, "let's do it your way."
Hope you all enjoyed this week's chapter. Some of you already guessed that this story was going to be heading this direction with Jaune offering up his aura for Penny. It's been something in the works from the early days of this fic so I am happy that it's getting to this point. I'm sorry for those of you who feel that this is dragging but I made a plan on how the story will go and I'm sticking to what I got planned, but I appreciate the commentary and will try to blend the action and the romance and the drama better as I continue to write. I hope you are still enjoying the story. As usual please review and leave your thoughts and opinions. As usual I would like to thank MidKnightMoonglow99, MajoryBrony95, DrknssRules1 and Firefly25 for all their help in this fic and the next.