Chapter 2 – What Ails an Android

Akoúo̱ was knocked aside by a rapidly flying sword, and Miló followed short after. Pyrrha was now completely disarmed against her opponent, the affable Penny Polendina. Disregarding the literal lifetime she'd spent hiding her semblance, she openly reached out with her magneto powers and pulled Miló back to her in front of the eagerly watching audience, but one of Penny's flying swords intercepted the weapon and sent it flying out of the boundaries of the arena.

Penny raised her hands above her head, palms down and fingers outstretched. The swords that she somehow manipulated rose above her as though commanded by the motion of her hands.

Then, without warning, the swords rapidly began to multiply. Ten became one hundred, which soon became two hundred and then a thousand. Pyrrha stumbled back in shock as the number of weapons changed right before her very eyes, its speedy growth matched only by that of Penny's devilish smile. The audience was completely silent in the face of the impending attack on their fan favorite.

Before Penny could launch the barrage of what looked like millions of swords at Pyrrha, the Invincible Girl dashed forward and landed a devastating kick right between Penny's legs. The vast majority of the floating swords disappeared, leaving only the original handful that Penny had possessed.

"My word!" came the loudspeakers. "What a tremendous display of nutcrushing by Miss Nikos! I do hope young Penny is alright."

Penny dropped to her knees, and then her forehead landed on the concrete as she collapsed. "Oh gods, right in my android balls! It hurts, it hurts, it huuuuuurts! Owwww, dear lord, my fat fucking cybernetic nuts! Why couldn't you have just killed me instead? At least death doesn't have any real consequences beyond briefly inconveniencing me until I get rebuilt. Awwww, my poor robo scrote! And my Penys too!"

Pyrrha was unsure of just how the millions of swords had appeared and why they went away just as quickly, but who cared? She'd won!

"Wow," said Emerald. "I guess it's not really a viable plan to make an illusion and just hope that someone will respond in a very particular manner that suits our interest, doing exactly the movements that we predicted. I mean, it's already nothing short of a miracle that Yang punched Mercury in the leg exactly in the spot we wanted and didn't just jump away or try and block his punch or just take the hit with her aura and used it to fuel her semblance liked she been doing for the entire rest of the match. So, Cinder, what's our backup plan?"

Cinder said nothing, looking away from Emerald.

"W-We do have a backup plan, right? Ma'am?"

"Well, let me put it to you this way. I can't imagine no situation doesn't exist in which we don't have no backup plans."

"We're fucked, aren't we?"

"As fucked as Penny's character development in Season 8. Like, seriously, why give her a human body if you've already made such a big deal about how she was always a real person and had a heart and a soul and didn't need, and I quote, 'squishy guts?' I know that her dying twice is already a thing, but there was really no need to do our girl dirty like that."

"So what are we going to do?" asked Emerald. "About the maiden powers? And the Fall of Beacon?"

Cinder opened her mouth to answer, but little did she know, General James Ironwood was piloting a one-man Atlesian airship over the Amity Colosseum. With the press of a single button, he dropped a nuclear warhead onto the arena, blowing them all up.

THE END

Author's Notes

RatCrimes: Oh, I'll write entire works in advance so that there's no risk of me going on hiatus or not finishing a fic. If anything were to potentially get in the way, I'll just post my entire fic to err on the safe side. There's literally no way there could be any delays!

Also RatCrimes: My computer broke and I can't post. Goodbye forever, Rat's Nest.

The rat lives! That's right, due to a computer breakdown, posting was shut down for nearly a month. At least it was the month when FFN completely crapped out, so I didn't lose as much. Anyhoo, all of my files were saved to the cloud, so there's no loss of data, just time. Hopefully, updates to The Empty Seat, Living The Dream, and RWBY But Worse will resume by the beginning of next work. Under normal circumstances, I'd post a bunch of backlogged chapters to make up for the loss, but since we're so close to the end of TES (and RWBY But Worse is so tiny as it is), I'm worried that I'd be down to one fic. I always want to be posting at least two at any given time, so I can advertise my upcoming replacement project in more than one place. Said replacement fic was almost finished when my computer died (22/25 chapters with a full outline for what's going to happen) but I couldn't write due to the computer issues, so I need time to finish it.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!