The following scene was written by The Primordial Clok Roo, with small tweaks and edits by me, and was taken from his oneshot "The Aftermath"

Penny sat on a bench in the schoolyard, looking down solemnly at the ground, completely disinterested in the world around her.

Earlier she had gotten into an argument with Gumball. She had been trying to help him while he was in a bad mood, but it ended with him lashing out and striking her. In the moment she was absolutely furious and shouted back, calling him a jerk and breaking up with him on the spot.

Now she felt awful with herself.

Was breaking up with Gumball the right thing? It should have seemed like the answer was obvious, given what happened, but she loved him too much to just end their relationship. Especially like this.

The person who attacked her before? That wasn't Gumball, or at least the Gumball that she knew. Gumball was usually kind and caring to the people he loved, and that included her.

The person she broke up with was angry.

There had never been a time when Penny had known Gumball to get angry. Sure he got a little irritated and grouchy sometimes, but never outright angry. Even when things were going bad, he always managed to push his way through and put on a brave face.

She didn't know how to feel about it all...

Penny suddenly felt as though everyone in the school was looking at her. She turned to see her friends – Leslie, Masami, and Carrie – all staring at her with weird looks on their faces.

"What are you looking at?!" She said, her own voice not sounding like how it usually does and perhaps more harshly than she intended.

"Errrr, what happened to you?" Masami asked.

They don't what happened? Penny thought to herself. They must've been elsewhere during recess...

"Yeah, you look like you were run over by a cement truck and then fused with a goblin," Carrie described.

Wait, look?

"I told you that diet you were on wasn't good for you," Leslie said.

Confused, Penny looked down at a puddle of water that was nearby to see her reflection. She was surprised to see that she had shapeshifted to resemble four different creatures all at once – each one representing the conflicting emotions she was feeling over what happened with Gumball.

Angry, scared, sad...

Alone.

I had no idea I could do that She thought to herself as she poked her tongue out at her ugly appearance.

"Penny?" Masami called again, reminding the fairy that they were still there googling at her, probably in disgust.

"Go away! Leave me alone!" She shouted. "And don't look at me!"

Not wanting to upset their friend further, the group just walked (or in Carrie's case floated) away and left her be. Now alone, Penny took a deep breath and emptied her mind – reverting back to her normal self in the process.

It was best for her to just not think about the incident with Gumball and just act like it never happened...

...

"Hey, Penny," Darwin said as he approached.

Penny sighed. Of course it wouldn't be that easy to just forget about Gumball...

"Hey Darwin," She replied in a sad tone. She looked at Darwin and was surprised to see him wearing a similar expression to her own. Now she was worried for her friend; worried that Gumball had upset him as well.

"I, uh... I heard about what happened between you and Gumball," He said, trying his best to express his sorrow for the incident. "I'm sorry about that. I can't believe he would do something like that to you..."

"It's fine," Penny sighed, an indication that it wasn't fine. Darwin sat down on the bench next to her. Penny registered the slumped posture and read the body language; her worries turned to certainty that she knew what was wrong. "He got mad at you too, didn't he?"

"Yeah..." Darwin sighed, beginning to tear up. "I was just trying to help him, and... he just got angry with me. Said I wasn't helping, pushed me to the ground and-... and called me a-... a-...p-p-p..."

Darwin started crying. He could finish what he was saying; the mere thought of it was enough to break his heart.

Penny reached out and petted Darwin's arm, hoping it would calm him. "It's OK, Darwin. He was just angry. I'm sure he didn't mean it."

She started tearing up herself. She knew she was lying when she said that, but she had to try something to help Darwin. His brother had just been mean to him; he needed all the comfort he could get.

And he had seen right through Penny's lie.

"You don't believe that, do you?" He asked.

"No," She moaned. "I just... I just want to believe it. i mean...s-surely he would never mean something like that, r-right?"

"Right..." Darwin sniffed away his tears for a moment. "Did...did you really mean it when you broke up with Gumball?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Penny snapped, her pent-up emotion becoming too much for her to bear as she momentarily lost control and began rapidly switching between different forms again before going back to normal. "I... I don't know... I was just upset. I couldn't believe what was happening! I was just trying to help him, but then he shouted and me, slapped me, and told me to-"

Penny couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence. The thought of what he had said was too unbearable even to consider.

"I can't believe this has happened, either," Darwin said sadly. "Gumball would never do anything to hurt the people he cares about – especially us... at least, not on purpose."

"Whoever that was, that wasn't Gumball," Penny added. "I don't know who it was, but that wasn't our friend. That person was a... a... a monster..."

Their attention was momentarily distracted when they heard a car pull up outside the school. To their surprise, it was Nicole. Even more surprising, they saw a rather angry Principal Brown escorting a very tattered, dirty, and guilty-looking Gumball to his mother so that she could take him home early.

But the biggest surprise – or at least to Darwin who knew his adopted mother well – was that Nicole didn't look even remotely angry.

"Gumball's being sent home early?" Penny asked. "Wh-what's he done? What's happened?"

"I don't know," Darwin replied. "But by the looks of things, I think-"

"He went passed his limit."

Penny and Darwin turned around and saw Anais walking over to them.

"Anais?" Darwin said rather rhetorically.

"What do you mean he 'went past his limit?'" Penny asked confused.

"I saw it happen," Anais started explaining. "I was in the yard being bullied by Julius and his 'friends' and was about to get beaten up when Gumball suddenly attacked them to protect me. But... but that wasn't Gumball who attacked. He would never do something like that. And that look in his eyes. He was so... angry."

"How angry do you mean?" Darwin asked, earning a 'seriously?' look from his sister.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She crossed her arms.

"I do?" He said. "I don't...think so."

"Darwin, don't you remember what happened with Mom in the mall that one time?" She asked, hoping to spark a memory.

"All I remember was us making Mrs Mom happy by decorating her face!" He said cheerfully, seeming to have forgotten about the incident.

"And what happened after we tried decorating her face?" Anais reminded.

It took a moment, but eventually, Darwin remembered. As he recalled what happened and connected the dots, his eyes dilated to almost nothingness. "Oh my god...oh my god..."

"Darwin, w-w-what's wrong?" Penny asked, being the only one unaware of what was being discussed.

Now trembling slightly he began to explain. "This one time, at the mall, Mrs Mom got so angry with us that she went beyond her limit," He explained, sounding nervous and panicked now that the memory had returned. "She turned into this crazy monster and began hunting us down. She was gonna kill us!"

Penny gasped in horror when she realized what this meant. "Wait, y-you aren't saying that-?"

"It's exactly what I'm saying," Anais announced. "Gumball's mood gradually became worse until he couldn't take it anymore and snapped. He took his frustration out on whoever was nearby because there was nothing else he could do about it.

"He...he didn't hurt you, did he?" Darwin placed his fin on her arm as he looked at her concerned. If she had been there when he lost it, if she had been right in the line of destruction, and he had no control over himself...

"He..." She began before hesitating. "...he almost did, but he snapped out of it in time." She responded, purposefully omitting the fact he'd thrown her against the fence and knocked her out. They were already worried enough as it is, they didn't need that on their minds too.

"Oh thank god..." Darwin sighed in relief.

"He chased Julius through the entire school though, and did thousands of dollars worth of damage. And he would have done more if I hadn't been there to break him out of it."

"Only thousands of dollars?" Darwin remarked. "Huh. At least he's improving. And that explains why the lights all exploded before-"

"Darwin! This is no time to be joking around!" Penny reminded the goldfish. "Don't you get what this means? Gumball didn't mean to get mad at us. He was being pushed past his limit... and we weren't helping. In fact, in trying to help we only made it worse..."

Darwin thought about it and realized... "You're right. We thought we were helping, but what he really needed was to be left alone. It's our fault this happened."

"No guys, it isn't," Anais said sadly as she shook her head. "you didn't know how he felt, you didn't know what he was going through. You can't blame yourselves for it. Plus, you two were only two small things in a whole bunch of other things that pushed him over."

"I know that Anais, but...I just still feel so guilty..."

"And you have every right to. But just remember, this was bound to happen eventually, whether you talked to him or not. It just took everything going wrong for him to finally snap... "

"He must feel so guilty..." Darwin sniffed.

"He does. When he snapped out of it he broke down sobbing in the middle of the corridor. I had to calm him down on my own..."

"and I'm sure you did a great job..." Penny assured her. "But now what he really needs is me and Darwin too. He needs to know we're there for him. All of us. He needs to know that he has our support."

"Agreed. We still have the rest of the day to get through first..." Anais reminded them. "Until then we'll just have to hope he'll be alright with Mom..."