Penn Zero Fanfiction

Brainz Burgers

"Alright, now that we've saved the world again…" Penn looked at the form of Boone lying down on the ground, knocked out from Sashi's kick. As a zombie, he was pretty much invincible so her kick didn't hurt him all that much. But now that he was back to normal…

"Uhh, Sash?" Penn said after nudging Boone with his foot and getting no response. "Maybe you should hold back a bit next time. He's not a zombie anymore, you know."
"So he felt that?" Sashi asked as she realized what that meant.

"Yeah," Penn answered.

She smiled in satisfaction. "Good". She turned her head up to the sky.

"PHYLLIS! ZAP US BACK!"

Suddenly, everything turned white as the feeling of gravity subsided. For a moment, they were just floating in white, before the brightness dimmed to reveal the theater and the familiar form of Phyllis, her face the same deadpan look she always wore.

"What happen to fat one?" she asked as their feet landed gently on the platform. Penn looked at Boone to see he hadn't moved at all from his position.

"Yeah, about that…" Penn began hesitantly.

"I kicked him," Sashi said nonchalantly. Phyllis raised an eyebrow.

"And?"
"And he might be dead," Penn said. Phyllis frowned and came over from her place beside the giant contraption that passed them through the different worlds of the Multiverse. She took something out of her pocket and it flashed on. Then Boone's mom's voice rang out from the device.

"Boooooooooone! The meatloaf is ready!"

Faster than Penn could blink, Boone was already up on his feet and running straight ahead before his eyes even fully opened.

"Coming, Mooo-UWH!" His call was cut short as his face slammed straight into the doors of the theater. He slowly peeled it back and blinked as he regained his bearings.

"Uuuhhhh," he said as he looked around and seemed to remember where he was. "What happened?"

"I bring you back to life," Phyllis said, pocketing the device and pressing a button on her remote. A giant claw came out of the ceiling and lifted her up, carrying her back to the portal machine.

"Wait, I was dead?!" Boone exclaimed as he started panicking. "Am I a zombie now?!"

"Relax, you big baby," Sashi said, rolling her eyes at her partner and ignoring the irony in his words. "You were a zombie. Phyllis cured you."

"Oh. Okay." Boone turned around, accepting her vague and, unbeknownst to him, completely false explanation and walked straight into the doors again. "Oh right, I gotta open them first." He opened the doors and walked out, Penn and Sashi following after him.

"Thank you, Phyllis, for saving fat friend after I kill him," Phyllis said sarcastically, shaking her head as she went back to tinkering.

Outside the theater, the three heroes prepared to part ways.

"Well, guess I'll see you guys tomorrow," Boone said as he waved to Penn and Sashi before turning around and heading home.

Sashi turned around to do the same but felt a hand on her shoulder stop her. She turned around to see Penn with a troubled look on his face.

"What's wrong, Penn?" she asked, concerned.

"Sashi, I need to talk to you about something important."

"Can it wait until tomorrow?" Sashi asked apologetically. "My relatives are coming over and my parents will be really mad if I don't show up on time."

"Fine, we'll just talk on the way there," Penn said, brushing past her. Her concern increased as she jogged to catch up to him.

"So what's up, PZ?" she asked.

"Sashi, you know you're a great sidekick, right? One of the best?"

Sashi's concern turned into confusion. "Uh, yeah?" she said, wondering where he was going with this.

"And you know that we couldn't have completed any of our missions without you, right?"

"Yeah?"

"So you know how important you are, right? Not just to us but to the Multiverse, too?"

"Penn, what are you trying to say?"

"Sashi why did you do that?"

"Do what?"
"Why did you let yourself turn into a zombie to save me?"

Sashi looked at Penn as if he had just asked her the stupidest question on the planet. Which he had.

"What do you mean, why did I do it?" she said disbelievingly. "I did it to save you, why else?"

"Why would you do that just to save me?" he demanded.

"So that you could complete the mission," she said, stating the obvious.

"And what if I hadn't?" Penn turned to look at her, his face even more conflicted than it had been a second ago.

"Penn, I knew you could do it," Sashi reassured him, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. However, her faith in him only seemed to do more damage as he shook her hand off.

"What if I couldn't do it, Sash? What if I couldn't save you? What if you and Boone were stuck as mindless zombies forever, huh?"

"Penn, I knew you were never going to let that happen."

"But what if-"

"Just stop it, Penn," she said, now getting frustrated. "We won, okay? We saved the day. We beat Rippen like we do every time. It's a win for us. So can you stop asking 'what if this' or 'what if that' and just be happy? You did it."
"I don't care if I did it, Sashi!" he said, his voice rising. "I care what would have happened to you if I couldn't do it. I care what would have happened to you guys if I failed. That's what I care about."

"What do you want me to say, Penn? That if I could do it all over again, that I wouldn't save you?"
"Yes! That's exactly what I want you to say!"

She stood still, looking at him in shocked silence.

"Why would I ever say that?"

This was so unlike the Penn she knew. His hands were clenched into fists. His eyes were bright with emotion, a mixture of sadness, anger, and worry. His teeth were clenched, his chest rising and falling as he breathed heavily. He closed his eyes and willed himself to calm down, trying to tame the storm of emotions raging inside of him. When he opened his eyes, they weren't shining anymore but were instead determined.

"Sashi, the Multiverse needs heroes. The worlds need saving. And if anything ever happens to me, the Multiverse is going to need you. You need to step up and be the Hero. If anything ever happens to me, you're the one who has to take my place. Do you understand?"

Sashi looked at him for a moment, her face still frozen in that same shocked expression before it turned into anger.

"What I understand," she spat, "is that you're telling me not to lift a finger to help you when you need it."

Penn sighed. "No, Sash, you don't understand what I'm trying to-"
"Then spit it out!" Sashi demanded, her voice taking on a venomous tone that didn't suit her. "What are you trying to say?!"

"I'm trying to say that you can't do things like that!"
"WHY?!"
"BECAUSE IT'S TOO DANGEROUS!" he screamed.

"So that's what this is really about," she said, realizing the real reason for this sudden outburst. "This isn't about the Multiverse needing heroes, this is about my job and what I do being too dangerous. Well, guess what, Penn? We save entire worlds every day from a part-time piece of garbage who wants to destroy them just so he can become a full-time piece of garbage! Of course it's going to be dangerous. Didn't anyone bother to tell you that when you took this job?"

Penn paused, a deep, uncharacteristic rage rising in his eyes and for a moment, Sashi thought she might have crossed a line, although she didn't know what.

"I didn't take this job," he said, his voice threateningly low. "I didn't take anything. I got something taken from me."

Suddenly, his anger and frustration vanished, leaving naked what he was really trying to hide. The hurt. The sadness. The loss that reminded him of all that he didn't have, no matter how hard he tried to forget it, even if only for a moment. Sashi looked at him and her heart ached. He was always so cheerful and happy and goofy that sometimes she forgot what he was really going through. Although he hid his pain very well from the outside world, she could see it clearly now, like an open wound slicing across his whole body, all the pain and anguish and hurt bleeding out of him.

"My parents were taken from me," he went on, choking out the words. "My chance at a normal life was taken from me." He looked up at her and his eyes were full of a deep sadness that shouldn't have been there. There was a loss and tiredness in them that shouldn't have been present in someone so young. "I was walking to school the other day and I passed by a family on my way. A mom and dad and their son. He was little, maybe three or four. The dad was carrying him on his shoulders and spinning him around and acting goofy and the boy was laughing so hard. And when I was watching them, I remembered how my mom and dad used to do that with me. How I used to be that little boy, riding on his dad's shoulders and laughing like he was and feeling like that was the highest place in the world. Because back then, it was." He paused and, despite his best efforts, a sob shook his body. "I had that taken away from me."

At some point, it had started raining and the rain blended with Penn's tears as they dripped down his face. He pushed the wet strands of hair out of his eyes as he looked her with a stare that bore into her.

"Sashi, I haven't been a hero for very long, but I've already lost a lot. You and Boone are the only ones helping me through this. And today, I almost lost you guys too." He stepped closer, his eyes never leaving hers, even as she tried to look away. "Sashi, I get that this job needs us to sacrifice things sometimes. But that doesn't mean we should sacrifice ourselves. I almost lost you guys today. What if I'd failed? What if you guys were stuck like that forever? Sashi, how could I live with that?" She turned away from him, unable to look into his pleading eyes.

He grabbed her shoulders and turned her back towards him. "Sashi, if something like that ever happens again, promise me that you'll do whatever it takes to complete the mission, with or without me. Please, Sash. Promise me."

He pleaded with her, his eyes begging her to say 'yes'. And seeing his desperation, she almost did. Almost.

Without warning, Sashi roughly pushed him away.

"No," she said. "No, I'll never promise that."

"Sashi-"

"NO!" Sashi cut him off. "All you're thinking about is your own feelings. What about mine? You keep saying you can't live with losing us. What makes you think I'm any different?"

Penn stared at her, trying to think of something to say but unable to think of anything. He was caught off-guard by the vulnerability in her voice. At that moment, her 'tough girl' facade crumbled away and Penn got his first look at the real Sashi and it shocked him.

"I was always different from the other kids," she said. "They all lived their normal lives but I was training to save the world. And I knew that if I wanted to be good enough, I was going to have to be tough. So I started acting mean and hitting everyone. People started to keep their distance from me. And how could I blame them? I hurt everyone around me for no reason. Who wants a friend like that? Even Boone was like that when we first met. He didn't want to be around me. I thought you would be like that too, but you weren't."

She looked him in the eyes and the pain in them was gone, replaced by an emotion he couldn't quite figure out. "You didn't let me push you away. You stayed by my side, even when I didn't want you there. You tried to be my friend, even though I told you I didn't need one. But I did." The emotion in her eyes grew. "I was so lonely and I didn't even know it until you showed me. And because of you, I finally learned how to let people in. I learned how to be a better person. And because of that, Boone let me in too. You two became my best and only friends. It wasn't much but it was more than I could have ever hoped for. I'm happy with my life and it's all thanks to you. I needed you and you were there for me. And now you're telling me not to be there for you?"

"Sashi, I'm not telling you not to be there for me," Penn said gently. "I'm just trying to tell you that you shouldn't do what you did today."

"But why, Penn?" Sashi demanded. "If I hadn't jumped in front of you, you would have turned into a zombie. I saw what that did to Boone. I wasn't gonna let that happen to you, too."

"But you're going to let it happen to you?!"

"If that's what it takes."
"And that's why you're wrong!" Penn said, his anger returning. "It's wrong for you to do that to yourself for me. You'll do whatever it takes to make sure I complete the mission without thinking about what happens to you. Look, I get that you want to be a good Sidekick, but destroying yourself to save me ISN'T YOUR JOB!"

Sashi stood there, dumbfounded at how little he really understood her. "My job?" she managed to say.

"YES," Penn said, his arms crossed and his eyes burning with an angry fire as he looked at her.

"You think I did it because it's my job?" she said. At the puzzled look on Penn's face, Sashi scoffed disbelievingly.

"I didn't turn myself into a zombie to save your life just because it's my job."

He blinked in confusion. "But then why did you do it?"

"BECAUSE I-"

She stopped herself before she could finish, breathing deeply for a moment to calm herself down. When she spoke again, her voice was much softer. "Because I care what happens to you." She said, looking away. "Stupid."

Penn stood there in shocked silence, his mouth open in an "O" as he processed what she had just said.

"I don't care what my job is, Penn. I saved your life because I wanted to and I'd do it again if I had to. Because that's what friends do. It's what you would do. It's what Boone would… Actually, that last one's not true. He'd probably run. But you wouldn't. And you wouldn't care about the mission either. You might say the most important thing is to complete the mission but you know that's not true. If it were me you needed to save, you'd do the same thing. If you still think I'm wrong, then tell me you wouldn't do the same. Tell me."

Penn opened his mouth to protest but she cut him off. "Tell me," she demanded.

"I-" Penn began. "I can't."

She walked up to him and got right up in his face. "I'm not going to apologize for saving your life. If you don't like it, then get a new Sidekick. Find someone who doesn't care about you Penn, because I do." She lowered her eyes. "I do."

With that, she turned around to leave but Penn grabbed her wrist, stopping her. He was sure she would pull away, kick him harder than she did Boone, bite his hand off, anything, but she didn't. She only stopped, letting him pull her back to him.

"I'm sorry, Sash," he said sincerely. "I really am. It's just…" He let her go and pushed his soaking wet hair out of his eyes as he tried to find the words. "Sashi, I just don't wanna lose you."

Sashi smiled, looking uncharacteristically gentle. "You'll never lose me, Penn," she said confidently.

"How can you be so sure?" he asked.

"Because you're Penn Zero. And you'll never let me down." She said it with such confidence and certainty that he found himself believing her.

With that, she turned around to walk back to her apartment.

"You know, Sash, if you'd just listen to me a little more, my life would be so much easier," he said, just loud enough for her to hear.

"Where's the fun in that?" she called out playfully behind her.

"You're a terrible Sidekick!" he called out after her.

"I'm still the best you're gonna get!" she shot back.

He smiled. "I couldn't imagine a better one," he said softly.

And with that, he turned to walk back to his own house. He hadn't noticed that it had stopped raining and as the sun started to peak out from behind the clouds, his mood lifted a little. Yeah, sometimes there were close calls. In this line of work, there always would be. But he wasn't alone. He had two amazing friends with him every step of the way. Besides, Sashi was right. He was Penn Zero. His parents were heralded as some of the greatest Part-Time Heroes of all time. If anyone was capable of overcoming harsh odds, it was him. And he would overcome them. Whether it was for the mission, for his parents, or for Boone and Sashi, he would do whatever it took. After all, that's what heroes do.