The sun was setting down in the sky of Vacuo, with shadow starting to envelop the buildings of Vacuo City and the camps that had hastily been made to host refugees from Atlas and Mantle, as there was not enough place to host all of them in Shade Academy and all the other buildings of the city.
On the roof of Shade Academy someone was sitting and watching the sunset. The girl who was looking at the sun had long orange hair and eyes as green and pure as the purest emerald, wore a green dress, a pink bow, and most strangely to the Vacuans who had met her, was barefoot which is an incongruity in a land where the sand and stone of the buildings were too hot to walk on without getting their feet burned.
Yet the heat and pain she was feeling in her feet was the least of Penny Polendina's worries , as she was starring at the sun with a solemn look on her face. Several days ago, being able of even feeling heat, to feel the wind on breezing her hair and to truly feel the light of the sun on her face would have filled her with wonder and joy, for she had never dreamed that she would one day feel the same sensations that beings born in flesh feel every day of their life but now she felt no excitement, joy or even curiosity for the various foods that had been presented to her ever since arriving to Vacuo.
To feel the warmth caused just by hugging another person had been the most thrilling and revolutionary experience she ever had, especially when this person was none other than her first and best friend Ruby Rose. Ruby that had called her a friend without even knowing her, that had accepted her for who she is even after revealing her robotic nature to her, had fought so hard to protect her when her robotic body had been hacked by Arthur Watts on General Ironwood's orders, even giving her a human body with the Staff of Creation to save her and give her a chance to live her dream, and was the bravest and most pured-hearted person she had ever met.
Other than her father, Pietro Polendina, a famous atlesian scientist who had created and taught her the importance of compassion, helping others and using any capacity she has been gifted for good Ruby had been the greatest source of inspiration for her, having become a huntress just to help others and make the world a better place, having taught her to never give up no matter the odds how grave the situation is, and how precious friendship is.
But now Ruby, as well as her teammates Weiss, Blake and Yang, Ruby's own sister, and their common friend Jaune Arc were gone forever. Having fallen from the bridges created by the spirit of creation Ambrosius inside a world of magic portals, to save the people of Solitas and transport them to Vacuo, her friends had been thrown in the void below the bridges by the fault of Cinder Fall, and of her acolyte Neopolitan. Despite her powers as the Winter Maiden, Penny had been unable to save them from falling into the void, nor to prevent Cinder from escaping with the Staff of Creation.
She also had no idea of what has happened to her dad, and to Maria, if there was even the slightest chance that they were alive or if they had crashed or been killed by the Grimm. She just wanted to reunite with her dad, to apologize for having not promised him to return to him well, and to let him see his daughter in flesh and to truly feel his embrace this time. Penny prayed every moment that they had survived, but she wasn't even sure if hope meant something after everything that had happened
Others such as Oscar or Theodore, Shade Academy headmaster, tried to comfort her, to reassure her, to tell her that it wasn't her fault, that she had no experience as a Maiden and in a human body, that she was blaming herself for things she had no control over.
But she had been made exactly for this kind of situations, she had been created to help and protect the world from Salem and her forces, to protect the kingdom of Atlas and humanity as a whole, having been built by the best scientist in Remnant that was her father and many other brilliant minds and equipped with the most advanced technologies so she could be the perfect combat machine and protector. And yet she had failed every time she should have fullfilled her role : at Beacon she had been cut down by her own swords and strings, causing her dad to sacrifice some of his own aura to bring her back. She had been upgraded with jet boots and even more powerful lasers and been made the Protector of Mantle yet she failed to defend the city and Atlas when they really needed her. She had become the Winter Maiden, only to fall to a virus, and gotten a human body only to to be unable to stop Cinder and save her friends when they needed her.
Penny had been called the Protector of Mantle, her remaining friends and Theodore were calling her the Winter Maiden, but how she could be called the Winter Maiden, let alone a protector when she couldn't even protect the most defenseless people of Mantle ? How could the true Winter Maiden have been unable of protecting the people closest to her, when they had managed to do it for her with far less advanced technology and without Maiden powers ?
As the sun went down tears invaded Penny's eyes, and she wept uncontrollably. Maybe General Ironwood and the Ace-Operatives were right, maybe Winter is the true Winter Maiden, she would surely have been able of saving her father, Ruby and the others with the Winter Maiden powers. Winter is a great and accomplished soldier and had been trained for the responsabilities of a leadership and of Maiden.
Penny had long thought that she was Combat Ready with her superhuman string, her swords, her strings and her lasers, but it turned out that no matter what technology and magic she was gifted with, she was Failure Ready instead.
To follow.
Hello everyone, this is my first fanfiction over, so please be indulgent in your reviews, if you write one. Please tell me what you think about this story, what the weak points and what can be bettered. English is not my native language so I may have made spelling and grammar errors, please signal them so I can correct them.