The time had come at last. The first day of Beacon's new semester had arrived.

Penny had been honest with Yang before: she had been waiting for this for a substantial portion of her awareness. Specifically, for ten out of the twelve days for which she had memories.

She had no memories before that time, even when she knew, logically, that her existence must have begun earlier than that. There was a gap between when she was first brought into being and what she could remember. Plumbing that gap had proven intensely uncomfortable, and Penny had stopped trying. Still, its existence nagged at her.

Enough of that! She attached a suspense timer to her melancholy and banished it from her consciousness. She could feel all that later. For now, there were other things to feel and appreciate.

There were so many new students coming! Or, if not new to Beacon, at least new to her! Penny had been staying at Beacon already, so she was naturally the first to be there on Student Arrival Day. Unable to wait to meet all these new people, she walked down to the airdock and took a position just outside the loading and unloading zone, where she greeted people with her full measure of excitement.

"Welcome to Beacon!" she said, waving brilliantly at the latest airship of students to debark onto Beacon's grounds. She was, in her opinion, quite cute (although she'd made a note to investigate the difference between 'cute' and 'hot' that Yang had identified for her). She had ended up going with the rainbow tattoo, which she'd put on her right cheek, and it was every bit as delightful as her modeling software had suggested.

The puppy tattoo, along with two dozen others that she'd purchased as her restraint had crumbled (and that a shaken and grateful shopkeep had sold her at a discount), was in a bag in her room, waiting for its time to come.

"Welcome to Beacon!" she said again, waving at full force. Some people didn't respond, and Penny thought she understood that. They were in a new situation, and new situations made people uncertain, and uncertainty made many people quiet. That wasn't her default reaction or response, but she'd seen it often enough even in her brief awareness to understand that it existed.

Other people waved back, and every time someone did, Penny grew more excited. Becoming friends with the people who waved at her seemed not only possible, but likely!

The final airship of the day rose to the docks. Penny hadn't seen Yang yet, which meant that Yang had to be on this final airship, and that made Penny's excitement, if it was possible, even keener.

"Welcome to Beacon!" She wore her brightest smile for the newcomers as she waved her hand so vigorously she got structural integrity warnings. "Welcome to-"

One of the first figures out of the airship did not return her wave, because he was rushing to the side of the dock and making a sound Penny had never heard before. Consumed with both concern and curiosity, Penny approached the figure, a boy with messy blonde hair and partial armor, who was bent over at the waist and making noises that did not seem to correlate with good health.

"Are you alright?" said Penny.

"I will be once the world stops spinning," said the boy. He sounded as if something was preventing him from speaking more naturally.

"But the world never stops spinning," said Penny reasonably. "That is physical fact."

"Please don't make it worse," the boy groaned.

"I'm sorry," Penny said with mild distress. "It was not my intent to make you feel worse. The opposite, in fact."

"Hey-o, Penny-o!" came a voice from behind, which Penny matched with 97.7% certainty to Yang's. She turned and the remaining 2.3% uncertainty vanished.

"Sal-u-tations, Yang! Welcome to Beacon!"

"I've kinda been here before, you know," said Yang with a grin. "I even seem to remember you being here with me."

"Indeed I was! But that was as guests, and now we're here as students, and that makes all the difference!"

"Sure," said Yang. "Love the face tat, by the way." As Penny logged the feeling of validation and wrote it to memory, Yang craned her head and saw the suffering boy further back. "You okay there, vomit boy?"

"Yeah," he said, at last restoring himself to an upright position, although to Penny's eyes he looked unusually green for human. "Yeah, I just… really don't like traveling by airship."

"I've got bad news for you," said Yang, "but Huntresses travel by airship all the time. That's part of why we all need landing strategies, you know?"

"All the time?" the boy repeated shakily.

Penny saw how the boy's skin tone was reversing its progression away from green. She had to intervene. "I'm sure there have been other Huntsmen who had trouble with airships. If they found solutions for them, I know we can find one for you."

"Yeah… yeah, you're right," said the boy, taking heart from her words. Success! "Motion sickness is a lot more common than people think, you know."

"I know now," said Penny, though she was anatomically incapable of relating.

"So I can just… do what those other people did." He smiled, and Penny recorded the interaction as a success.

"Adorable," said Yang, though her voice was different from how Penny had heard the word said before. "What's your name, anyway? Unless you want me to call you Vomit Boy for four years."

"Of course I have a name!" said the boy, and the last of his green was fading. "The name's Jaune Arc. Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue. The ladies love it!"

"Do they really?" Penny gasped, craving the insight.

"Uh… maybe?" said Jaune. Penny realized that the words before had been a recitation, something he'd practiced, because his voice was totally different when he was having to process in real-time. Ooh, did humans have separate language subroutines? Maybe one linked to memory and one linked to active construction? Something to investigate later!

"I wouldn't count on it, lady-killer," said Yang.

"Did you give yourself that name?" said Penny.

"My mom did," said Jaune, and he looked like he was trying to hide even with nothing to hide behind.

"Your mother is a lady," Penny said, following the logic like it was train tracks, "and that lady gave you that name. Therefore, the ladies do love it! Or at least one lady does."

Yang laughed. "You know what? I have no counterargument. You win this round, Penny. Just be warned, I will have my revenge!"

"I will stay alert," Penny promised.

"Who is that?"

Jaune was pointing towards the open courtyard beyond the dock. A wide, circular area paved with cobblestones eased the transition from the dock to the approach to the main campus. Staying near the side of that area, out of the way but not proceeding on towards Beacon, was a trolley stacked high with white suitcases. Fussing over said suitcases stood a girl so described by the word "pale" that even Thesaurus deemed that good enough.

Her combat skirt and heeled boots were flour-white, her skin was pallid, and even her hair was white as snow. Seemingly satisfied with the new arrangements on her trolley, the girl turned to look towards Beacon proper—but she took not one step in that direction. Part of her lip disappeared between her teeth.

"She's pretty," Jaune said, his voice just above a breath.

"It's only skin-deep."

Penny's head jerked towards the dock, and she wasn't the only one; Yang and Jaune looked, too. What must have been the very last person aboard the airship had finally debarked, as the airship was now pulling away and leaving them with no cover or place to retreat.

This new girl, Penny noted, wore a black bow atop her head and a black shirt with tails trailing behind her. Much less interesting than her attire, however, was her expression, which was so intense Penny was frightened.

She didn't recognize the emotion that was radiating from the newcomer. She had no experience with emotions that strong. All she knew was that it was powerful, and alarming, and focused neatly on the pale girl across the courtyard.

"That's Weiss Schnee," the girl in black said. "Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company, by far the largest Dust company in the world… and the one most soaked in blood money."

Unbidden words came to Penny's lips. "The Schnee Dust Company is a bulwark of the Kingdom of Atlas," she said, without any idea why she was saying it.

A noise like a blast of steam escaped the newcomer. "You'll see. Or you'll learn the truth in your history class. Either way."

She stalked past Penny and her friends (wait, was Jaune her friend already? Yes, Penny decided he was—sensational!) and continued on into the campus grounds, staying as far from Weiss as physically possible.

"So her name is Weiss," said Jaune, looking back to the distant heiress. Weiss had gotten her scroll out, but had apparently either finished her business or been disappointed by what she saw there, because she'd replaced it, still without moving herself or her trolley. "I'm gonna go see if she needs a hand with that. That's a lot of luggage."

He set off across the courtyard, almost skipping in his eagerness.

Yang sidled up next to Penny with a smirk on her face. "Hey, Penny."

Penny couldn't help the smile that came to her from sympathy alone. "Yes, Yang?"

"Do you think Jaune knows his way around campus?"

"I'd say the probability he does is under ten percent."

"How long do you think until Weiss realizes that?"

"Around thirty seconds."

"And how long until Jaune realizes that?"

"Around thirty-two seconds."

Her smirk wider than ever, Yang looped an arm around Penny's shoulders. "Then let's sit back, Penny my friend, and enjoy the show."

They did rescue Jaune, of course.

Earlier than expected, even. Penny was just able to make out shouted words along the lines of "can do it myself" and "who do you think you are". Penny was unsure why someone would be so upset about receiving help, but she decided she'd rather not ask Weiss Schnee to explain it to her.

So Yang and Penny trooped up the walkway towards the Beacon ballroom where the greeting ceremonies would commence, Jaune between them with his head and shoulders slumped.

"I was just trying to be a gentleman," he said.

Thesaurus pinged. "I thought it was gallant," Penny said. "Did you tell her your name?"

"Yeah."

"She didn't love it," said Yang.

"No."

"Eh, maybe someone else will. But you know what'll make you feel better?"

Jaune perked up his head. "What?"

Yang jerked her head back behind them. "She's following us."

Penny gasped in discovery. "Do you suppose she was simply embarrassed that she didn't know where to go?"

"Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner!"

Penny smiled. Correctly interpreting a difficult display of human behavior? That made her feel very much like a winner. She liked being a winner.

"So it wasn't really about me," said Jaune thoughtfully. "It was just a bad time for her. In that case, I'll try again later. Maybe it'll go better next time."

"And maybe next time pigs will fly," muttered Yang.

"Waitaminute!" said Jaune, now perked up in outrage. "If I didn't know where to go next, and Weiss didn't know where to go next, how did you know where to go next?"

"I have been here before," said Penny.

Jaune's eyes widened. "You're upperclassmen?!"

"No, we're…" Penny tried to answer, but found herself at a loss for the right term. Thesaurus was certain the correct term was "freshmen", but Analysis countered that the two people in question weren't men at all, so Penny took her chances with a gender-neutral alternative. "…fresh."

"You mean we're frosh," Yang said with a grin.

Thesaurus metaphorically threw its hands in the air and gave up.

"We've been here before," Yang continued, for which Penny was grateful. "A couple of nights ago, actually. We were up to some extracurriculars, weren't we, Penny?"

"That's right!" said Penny. A thought occurred to her. "Yang, do you think it was as educational for the criminals as it was for us?"

"Eh," said Yang, wobbling her hand on its axis. "I've clobbered those guys before, so apparently they didn't learn much the first time."

"Repetition is key to learning," Penny said sagely. "Maybe the second lesson will teach them more."

"Maybe."

"But if you 'clobbered' them before, why were they not in jail?"

Yang must have had an itch, because she scratched the back of her head and didn't look Penny in the eye. "The first time I got 'em was… a little different. There weren't cops around, for one thing."

"That's unfortunate," said Penny.

"…yeeeeahhhh, that's the word we'll go with."

Penny realized Jaune hadn't said much in a while. She noticed that he'd gone as pale as he had been green. With as much as his skin changed color, Penny would almost believe he was a chameleon Faunus.

(The thought lodged in her net more firmly than expected.)

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

"You two are just… uh… a little scary," he said.

Penny blinked in surprise and consulted Thesaurus. Out of all the words she had listed to describe herself, "scary" wasn't on the list, nor were any of its synonyms, even stretching definitions to their limits.

"Are citizen's arrests that uncommon?" she asked tentatively.

"I think it's more the 'beat up a bunch of crooks' thing that's got him," said Yang. "Don't sweat it, though. I don't think there's anyone at Beacon quite like us."

"I'm certain of it," Penny said with Jiminy's full approval.

They'd made it to the milling crowd awaiting the greeting ceremony, where they stood in a loose trio at the back.

"Do we have somewhere to put our weapons?" Jaune asked. He gestured to his hip, where a sheathed sword sat. "I'm sure there is, you two aren't carrying yours…"

"We totally are," Yang said.

Jaune cocked his head, as if that would help the facts fit into his skull properly. (For all Penny knew, it would.)

Yang raised a hand and tapped her bracelet. "These bad girls unfold into shot-gauntlets."

"And I am carrying my sword, also," said Penny, lifting her own right arm. There, on the underside of her forearm, was a collapsed Elektra, suspended on a brand-new forearm stow.

"Wasn't your stow on your back?" said Yang.

"It was," Penny said, "but I decided a vertical stow along my back wasn't the most practical. It's much closer to hand on my forearm, so after our fight I built myself a new forearm stow."

"That was quick," said Yang, sounding impressed.

"So quick I'm not used to it yet," Penny agreed. "It adds significant weight when I do things like… wave… Oh. Oh dear."

"What?" said Yang.

Penny tamped down Emotion Signifying from monopolizing her voice and face, though it very much wanted to; Penny felt that letting it convey her embarrassment would only amplify it. "I waved to each and every student that got off the airships until you two arrived... with the hand Elektra is on."

Yang laughed and bumped her shoulder against Penny's. "So the entire student population of Beacon thought you were either threatening them or showing off, huh?"

"85% of it," said Penny, and Emotion Signifying won some small control of her voice to communicate her despair, "but yes, I think so. That explains very many of the faces they made at me."

"Don't worry about the crushing shame of it all," said Yang with unfair exuberance, "you've got four years to show 'em! Anyone who doesn't either love you or respect you after that, screw 'em."

"That is very reassuring," Penny said, and Yang's camaraderie and proximity did help quite a bit. "Although I wish I were not so embarrassed about it."

"At least you didn't puke, repeatedly, in front of a whole airship's worth of students," Jaune said. "If we're talking about who's looking cool, you're way ahead of me."

"And don't worry if you're less cool than me," said Yang, her smile brilliant, "because, honestly, who isn't?"

"I can't imagine," said Penny.

"Damn straight."

"Besides," said Jaune, looking at Penny's arm, "that doesn't look like much anyway. What kind of weapon is that?"

At last! Weaponry was much safer ground than emotions. Yang, sensing what was coming, stepped away from Penny to give her space. Penny flicked her forearm as she disengaged her stow, slipped Elektra's collapsed hilt into her hand, and activated its mecha-shift.

"Holy crap," said Jaune as he staggered back.

"I know, right?" said Yang, nodding appreciatively.

"This is Elektra," said Penny brightly, "and it is a Dust-Amplified Double-Breadth Claymore with Integrated Burn Dust Projector!"

Jaune blinked rapidly.

"It's a big sword with a flamethrower," Yang said helpfully.

"Maybe I should just say that next time," Penny said, "even if it is less specific."

"Nah," said Yang, "you do you."

Jaune's eyes were as wide as they could be. "How can you even swing a sword that big?" he said, self-consciously putting a hand on the hilt of his own blade.

"Any Aura user could wield a blade this size," Penny said truthfully, even as Jiminy sent her warnings about what she was about to say. "But it is especially easy for me, because my semblance gives me much-enhanced physical attributes!"

"She's really strong," Yang translated.

Penny was grateful for that, not only because it helped Jaune but also because Yang's voice covered up Penny's hiccup. It was no semblance that explained her strength; it was just how she was built. 'Semblance' was a more convenient explanation for appearing human.

Jiminy protested that convenience was no excuse for lying. Jiminy had a point.

"Dust-amplified?" Jaune said, still taking in the sword before him. "Why would you even need Dust with a sword like that?"

"There are dangerous enemies out there," said Penny, speaking from somewhere she didn't know. "Enemies far stronger than the grimm outside the cities. We need the best weapons available to fight them."

Vocal control was released (by what? From what?) back to higher consciousness; hoping no one noticed her lapse, she hurried along, "Elektra's base form is fine against lesser grimm, but Dust will help me fight the toughest. Gravity Dust improves the impact, and, combined with Burn Dust, turns Elektra into a giant flaming blade of utter annihilation!"

"Make stuff die," said Yang.

"I know what 'annihilation' means!" Jaune said snippily.

"Just helping out."

"Yo, frosh," said an upperclassman (upperclasswoman? Was the term unisex? Thesaurus was confused now) as she looked over sunglasses at the trio. "I know you're excited, but cool your jets and put that away. Headmaster's coming up."

"Yes, ma'am," said Penny, and she collapsed and stowed Elektra in a single series of motions.

The upperclassperson raised an eyebrow, but said nothing as she turned back to the stage ahead.

"Well, let's listen up, then," said Jaune, and he (with glances at Penny's forearm) came back into line with Penny and Yang.

"Yes, Friend Jaune," said Penny. "I am sure Professor Ozpin has great wisdom to share with us!"

It took some time, but Jiminy finally accepted the argument that it wasn't a lie if Penny's words should have been true.

A sleepover in the Beacon ballroom seemed, in the abstract, like the sort of thing Penny would be delighted to be part of. The idea of meeting and being around many new people seemed attractive at first thought.

The reality was turning out to be harrowing instead.

She retreated to the bathroom once again. Of course she didn't need to use it for its installed purpose, but going there gave her a chance to have some separation and feel some relief. She took the moment to review some of her prior system performance logs.

Analyzing the words, expressions, intonations, and posture of another person during a conversation took up to 60% of her total processor cycles. Her conversation with Jaune and Yang had consumed just over 85%. That fateful talk with Professors Ozpin and Goodwitch had taken very nearly 100%. Given the importance of that conversation, Penny supposed she shouldn't be surprised by that, but the results of this retrospective were still alarming.

Attempting to converse with even a small number of people was overclocking her. Trying to interpret the words and actions of a whole ballroom of people…

She shook slightly as she tried to recover.

It didn't help that the suspense timer on her melancholy from the morning had expired, and now she was feeling those delayed feelings on top of everything else, which frankly was more than she'd thought she'd be able to feel. Apparently, her emotional capacity exceeded her expectations. She wasn't sure she liked that.

Penny looked at herself in the mirror and was relieved to see that she didn't appear as frazzled as she felt. She looked... like Penny. That would do.

The door opened. For a moment, Penny was gripped by the urge to do something to justify her presence in the bathroom. Before she could, the other person had come in and stood next to her to look into the mirror alongside.

It was Weiss. Weiss' face was tense, and her mouth seemed much smaller than a normal person's mouth. Oh, that was because she'd pressed her lips so hard together they were paling as the blood was forced from them.

It was the sort of anatomical detail that Penny relied upon to interpret human emotions while not being human herself. It was why conversing took so much processing power.

"I can't believe some people," said Weiss with no lead-in at all. She had a hairbrush in one hand, and in lieu of explaining set about running the brush through her hair. Penny didn't know what Weiss hoped to accomplish. Weiss' hair was completely untangled and devoid of obstruction, and the brush slipped through it like water. That didn't stop her from keeping at the task.

Penny, believing this to be a prompt, dared to say, "Who do you not believe?"

"Half of those fools," and the last word was said with such force even Penny could recognize the venom there. "We're supposed to be sleeping and getting ready for Initiation tomorrow, where we'll have to perform at our best, at our absolute peak. How can anyone be at peak performance without a good night's sleep? And there are so many people out there who don't seem to care about their sleep or anyone else's!"

Penny was at a complete loss. She didn't need sleep, per se; although she benefited from downtime every few days to perform system maintenance, hard drive defragmentation, and so on, she could enter that mode on demand and recover from it just as readily. She had her own needs, including some the students didn't have, but sleep was not one of them.

"Is it that hard for you to get to sleep?" she asked.

"I don't know how anyone could get to sleep with that racket," Weiss said, the brush running free again and again. "There's some redheaded girl at the side of the room who's taking on all comers in arm wrestling! Arm wrestling! Isn't she worried about being tired and sore tomorrow? And isn't that one of the loudest things she could possibly be doing?"

Oh, thought Penny, so that's what that commotion in the corner was. She hadn't understood, and trying to figure it out had maxed out her processors. "Was she winning?" she asked innocently.

The hairbrush slammed down onto the counter. "Who cares if she was winning? I only care that as long as they keep at it, I won't be able to sleep!"

Penny had noticed some people either sleeping or close to it. It was difficult for her to tell the difference, having no frame of reference of her own. If those people had been sleeping, though, it implied that they had different needs for sleep than other people did, certainly different than Weiss seemed to have.

In which case... "Maybe the redhead needs to arm wrestle to get ready to sleep?" she hazarded.

Judging from Weiss' reaction, Penny had guessed wrong. "No one needs to arm wrestle to get ready to sleep, don't be ridiculous," she snapped. "She's just being loud for the sake of it. I wish she could be somewhere else, anywhere else."

At the last words, Weiss looked into the mirror, and stared at her own reflection with a terrible intensity.

Penny didn't understand at all. It was like she was trying to climb up a ladder made of air. "Is there something I can do to help?" she said cautiously.

Her words seemed to startle Weiss and bring her attention back from whatever had distracted her, perhaps some processor-intensive or analytical subroutine of her own. She still found it within her power to scoff. "Unless you're able to break up that arm wrestling ring, I don't think there's anything anyone can do. And even if you did, there's so many people talking and having their lights on and listening to music..."

"And you'd rather those other people conform to your desires?" Penny tried.

Weiss' head whipped in Penny's direction. She gave her a scrutinizing luck, though Penny didn't know what she was looking for, which made her less comfortable than ever.

"Are you making fun of me?" Weiss said, her voice low.

"No, surely not!" said Penny in rush.

"You're just careless, then," said Weiss. "I don't think I like you."

The words were an unexpected blow. Emotion Signifying grabbed control of Penny's facial expressions and tone of voice, though higher consciousness barely paid attention to what it was doing. "I was trying to empathize," Penny said, "but if this is how you treat people who empathize, then I know I do not like you!"

She left the bathroom. Given the choice between dealing with hundreds of unknowable people or one known Weiss, Penny chose the unknowable.

The night dragged on. To Penny's relief, and probably Weiss' for that matter, things began to calm down. The conversations that persisted were mostly whispers instead of yelling, and the arm-wrestling ring had finally broken up. This left Penny with a new problem to consider. She didn't need to sleep, but she could do with a recharge, and recharging in a not-obvious way would be a challenge.

She'd thought about this problem before, and had come up with the solution of using a gutted and customized scroll with a much larger battery to use as an intermediary to pass a partial charge onto her. It was inefficient, but subtle.

Unfortunately, everywhere she looked in the ballroom, every available charging station was already occupied. A few enterprising students had brought power strips, and even all those ports were already stuffed full.

"You looking to recharge your scroll?"

The red-haired girl who had been running the arm-wrestling competition earlier had bounced up to Penny. Despite the late hour, she looked as if she was still at full charge.

"I was, actually," said Penny.

"Don't worry, I gotcha. Just gimme the end of your cord."

Reluctantly, as Penny was wary of giving away how nonstandard her scroll was, she extended the cord from her scroll over to the redhead.

In an act that could not possibly have been sanitary, the redhead popped the end of the cord into her mouth.

Penny began to object, but was startled to see the charge level on her scroll rapidly rising. The redhead hummed vaguely and shot Penny a wink, none of which Penny could begin to understand. After twenty-seven seconds, her scroll was at a sizable percentage of its maximum charge.

The redhead spat out the end of the cord and staggered. "Whoa," she said, holding a hand to her head, "either I'm tired-er than I thought, or that's some scroll you got there, girl!"

All thoughts of secrecy were forgotten. "How did you do that?" Penny asked.

"It's my semblance," the girl said proudly. "High Voltage! Normally I use it to soak up electricity and get stronger, but I can also give up some strength to make a little juice! Makes me kinda lightheaded, though, and don't ask me to do pushups for a few minutes."

"I promise I won't," said Penny. In fact, she was suddenly keen on getting and staying far away from the scary electricity girl. Penny's like-skin provided some insulation, but not enough for her to feel comfortable anywhere near a walking generator.

"The name's Nora Valkyrie, by the way," said the redhead, "and yours is the fourth or fifth scroll I've charged up like this. Although, that's the most it's taken out of me. I should probably head to bed."

"I'll say," said Penny. An echo of Weiss' words came back to her. "Are you going to be in okay shape for initiation tomorrow? After all that arm-wrestling and recharging of peoples' scrolls?"

Nora grinned. "I could've gone for five more rounds if Ren hadn't made me stop. Why, did you wanna have a go? You want a piece of this?"

Nora raised her arm in challenge. Penny shied away. "I was just concerned about your safety tomorrow," she said, warily eying Nora's arm. It was not particularly thick, but looked solid as stone, and Penny knew that Aura and muscle complemented each other in ways not always obvious to the eye. Tactical had three warnings posted and was generating a fourth.

"Aww, that's sweet!" said Nora. "You don't have to worry about me, though, gimme a few minutes at the buffet line at breakfast tomorrow and I'll be raring to go!"

Uh oh. People were going to be eating together? Penny couldn't eat! How was she going to appear to be a normal girl if everyone else was eating and she was not?

Handing off that problem to Analysis as a priority task, Penny said to Nora, "I will see you in the morning, then." Preferably from a great distance.

Nora gave the impression of a salute before she turned and skipped back to her corner, where a dark-haired boy was sitting with his back to the wall. Penny thought he must be asleep, but his eyes popped open when Nora got close, and the two exchanged quiet words. Something about their interaction made Penny feel tight on the inside. The two clearly knew each other and had no problems coexisting in the same space.

Ah. That was it. Penny wanted what they had. Thesaurus instantly pulled up the matching word: envy.

Penny hoped that one day she would have something like that with Yang, or with her other friends when she made more. She hoped she would find that someday.

But being so intimate with someone meant that 'someone' would eventually discover she was not a real girl.

Well, she'd just have to find someone who could appreciate her anyway.

It was odd. That last thought was logically correct, and the only reasonable course of action, but knowing that brought Penny no comfort.

Penny settled into a space vaguely near Yang. Imitating the other students, she laid down on her bedroll and pulled the blanket over herself. This had the fortunate effect of concealing her scroll charger and the fact that she'd plugged it into herself.

There she waited, combing through her logs from her interactions with people over the course of the day to figure out ways to look more natural. Most importantly, she had to figure out a way to get through breakfast without being obviously fake.

She'd been crunching the numbers on this problem for an hour when one more bit of motion caught her attention. Someone had been sitting along the side of the room, her back to the wall and a book in her hands. Penny recognized the person as Blake, but she couldn't tell what book it was.

It took Penny a moment to realize why. When she did, she felt foolish.

Tactical had swapped vision mode from visual to infrared without bothering to inform higher consciousness. There was almost no light in this room to see with, or for that matter to read with. Which strongly suggested…

Yes, Penny could see it in IR: cat ears hiding inside Blake's bow.

Okay, then. Blake Belladonna was a Faunus. That was important.

(Why was that important? …Unclear. Don't think about it.)

Penny didn't know why Blake was staying up so late reading, but she hoped she would still be alert and active in the morning.

Penny truly didn't know how sleep worked, and it was increasingly bothering her.

Well! Even with her uncertainties about the next day, Penny could not describe her first day at Beacon as anything less than a resounding success. She'd made two friends; had made acquaintances, happy or otherwise, with three more people; and was one day closer to taking a more permanent place at the Academy. There were many things she could have optimized, but she thought she'd place this in the upper quartile of possible first-day outcomes.

She'd do her best to ensure that tomorrow was even better.

Next time: Thrown Together