In the morning, Penny scrubbed off the rainbow tattoo and replaced it with the puppy tattoo, because while a rainbow was lovely it was conventionally defenseless, whereas putting on the puppy sent a message. After that, she found her way to Yang and Jaune. She followed their lead in getting dressed for the morning. She followed their lead in cleaning up her bedding. She even followed their lead out of the ballroom and on towards the cafeteria.
Only realizing too late that they were getting breakfast, and she still had no plan for how to conceal her non-eating nature.
She wiggled in place, so nervous that it found physical expression, while her processors whirred in search of a solution.
Yang leaned close and whispered, "Hey, you need to go to the bathroom or something?"
"No," Penny moaned.
"It's cool, I'll hold your spot in line for you."
"I promise that is not the problem," said Penny, more embarrassed than ever.
Somehow, Jaune looked and sounded worse. "I'm not sure I should eat anything. I feel like anything I ate would come right back up."
"You're determined to make that Vomit Boy nickname stick, eh?" said Yang.
"I might just skip breakfast," said Jaune. "Just focus on getting ready and... stuff."
Penny felt elation. If someone else was backing out of the food line, she could go with them and blend in with that miniature group.
"With as much action as we're getting today, you should probably eat something," said Yang.
"I know," moped Jaune, and he stayed in line.
Drat.
Their group was advancing, they'd be inside the cafeteria soon.
"I don't think I should go inside," said Penny nervously.
Yang raised an eyebrow at her, which made Penny feel panic, but Jaune unexpectedly said, "Oh, do you have a food allergy?"
"I'm sure they have options in the line," said Yang. "Signal did, and Beacon has a bigger budget than Signal. Even if she has a food allergy, she can still eat the other stuff."
Jaune shook his head. "That's not how all allergies work. One of my sisters has such a bad food allergy she can't eat anything that's prepared in the same kitchen as peanuts. Cross-contamination is a thing."
Yang nodded slowly, looking impressed. "Good to know. You've got sisters?"
"Seven," said Jaune in a voice that reminded Penny of unpowered gears grinding to a halt.
"Nice, there's a whole Vomit Clan!"
"You're not making it any easier to hold down my breakfast."
"We haven't eaten breakfast yet."
"And at this rate, I'm not sure I will!"
Penny paid only scant attention to the chatter between the blondes. She'd been rapidly assessing the plausibility of a food allergy as a cover for not-eating, and trialing how to phrase that excuse without triggering Jiminy. As the back and forth between Jaune and Yang concluded, Penny spoke delicately. "Jaune is right. I am afraid the food here is prepared in a way that's incompatible with my health. Don't worry, I'll take care of myself. I'll meet up with the two of you again in the armory. Does that sound good?"
"Sure thing," said Yang, "see ya there."
Penny made good her escape with great relief.
Now she just had to figure out what a food allergy was.
When Penny closed her locker, it revealed someone she didn't expect. She would have expected to see Jaune or Yang, but instead, there was Weiss.
Weiss was standing so stiffly that Penny was almost convinced she was a gynoid as well. Looking as if it cost her great effort, Weiss said, "Neither of us were at our best last night, and it showed in how we treated each other."
That wasn't how Penny remembered things, but Weiss was rolling right along with no mind to what Penny might say. "Because of that, I reacted more harshly than I intended." She hesitated, then added, "I'm not used to people trying to empathize with me. It caught me off guard."
Thoughts of herself left Penny. "I am sorry that you've encountered so few people willing to treat you kindly. As I see it, everyone needs people to empathize with them! That's why we make friends, isn't it?"
"I'm not prepared to talk about 'friends'," Weiss said sternly. "However… I am willing to offer a fresh start between us. We'll say last night didn't happen, and we'll begin anew."
Penny adjusted the metadata tags on her memories of the previous night, not erasing them but suppressing them. "Done!" she said proudly. "Weiss Schnee, I am Penny Pallas, and it is a pleasure to meet you."
Weiss hesitated, as if unwilling to commit that far, but managed, "Charmed."
"That was a beautiful moment."
Jaune had invited himself into the conversation. "That's a level of emotional maturity you don't often see in people our age, and between that and how pretty you are, well, I don't even know what to say!"
Weiss had stiffened again, and her face tightened in a way that made Tactical sound the alarm.
"So, snow angel," Jaune went on, "how about we forget our rough start yesterday, too? Toss out the bad stuff, give us another chance, and see where it goes."
Even Penny, as ignorant of romance as she knew herself to be, could see this was a bad idea.
"I said everything there is to say on the matter yesterday," said Weiss. "I'm not interested."
"Are you sure?" said Jaune. "Because I heard a rumor that teams are forming up today, and I think a team of you, me, Penny, and Yang would be pretty awesome!"
"You don't even know how teams are formed, do you?" said Weiss.
For once, Jaune didn't speak, which seemed to Penny the only way for him to avoid saying the wrong thing.
Weiss scowled. "If we have the opportunity to choose our own teammates, you are last on my list. I'm not looking for someone chasing me, and I'm not particularly looking for a friend. I'm looking for someone who can maximize my chances of getting through this school at the top of the class. And you..." She ran her eyes over him, down and then up again, more thoroughly than Penny thought she herself could do with infrared or penetrating sensors, "…are not that person."
She walked right past him, eyes half-closed to avoid looking at him. In her wake Jaune slumped forward.
"It was a valiant attempt?" said Penny.
"My dad said all girls look for in a guy is confidence," said Jaune. "Where did I do wrong?"
Yang slung an arm over Jaune's shoulders and said, "'Snow angel'."
"It was a compliment," Jaune protested feebly.
"I thought your confidence was very impressive," Penny said. To the point of recklessness, she added to herself.
"Thanks, guys." Jaune looked in the direction Weiss had gone. "Well, who does she think can help her graduate at the top of the class? Let's see who she has in mind. That'll tell us a lot, I think. Maybe even show what I can do better!"
He started to move, but Yang kept a hand on his collar, and his feet almost flew out from underneath him. "Hold on there, lover boy," said Yang, "there's pursuing someone and then there's stalking someone."
"Those are very different things," Penny said knowingly. Thesaurus was certain of it.
"I wasn't gonna go after her," Jaune protested. "I was just gonna, you know, see what she was up to."
"That's called stalking someone," said Yang brightly. "Look, you've got your gear, right?"
"Right," said Jaune, placing a hand self-consciously on the pommel of the sword at his hip.
"Then I think we're done here," said Yang. "Let's head on out, they have a rally point for us before we head down to Beacon cliffs."
Luckily for Jaune, Weiss happened to be on their way out, talking to a statuesque girl with long red hair and bronzed armor. Jaune slowed down to linger, but Yang didn't, and she muscled him right past.
"…which is why I think we should be teammates!" Weiss was saying, the tail end of what Penny assessed to be a prepared speech.
"I was planning to let the chips fall where they may," said the taller girl.
"No, but seriously, who is that?" said Jaune, almost comically loudly, right as Yang pushed him bodily out the door.
The taller girl's head snapped in Jaune's direction, as if he'd said something she didn't believe but needed to hear.
Penny, consumed with curiosity, found herself compelled to stick around, and she brought her sword in front of her as if inspecting it to give her an excuse.
Weiss looked upset that the taller girl's attention had shifted away. "You'll at least think about it, right?" she said.
"Sure," said the taller girl, but she did so with long, vague tones that made Penny wonder if she knew what she was saying.
"That's all I ask for," said Weiss, curtsying neatly. "Thank you for your time, Pyrrha."
"Right," said the taller girl (identity updated: Pyrrha). "We should head out, don't you think?"
"Yes, let's walk together," said Weiss eagerly.
"That sounds splendid!" said Penny.
Weiss' head jerked in Penny's direction so hard that Penny was worried for her neck. "You again?!"
"Sal-u-tations!" said Penny. "…again."
People continued to be confusing.
Pyrrha had asked Penny if she knew her. Penny had responded, "I know that your name is Pyrrha, but I wouldn't say I know you. I would be glad to find out!"
That had made Pyrrha look inexplicably happy even as Weiss stomped out of the room so hard Penny thought she was trying to damage the floor.
Now the new students had arrived at the cliffs overlooking the Emerald Forest, where a similar conversation was taking place.
"I won the Mistral Junior Regionals four years in a row," said Pyrrha.
"Am I supposed to know what those are?" said Jaune with apparent sincerity.
"It's fine if you don't," said Pyrrha, growing visibly more excited. "In fact, I'd say it's better."
"I guess you seem kind of familiar," Jaune said, though he sounded forced.
"She was on the box of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes," Yang said helpfully from Jaune's other side.
Jaune gasped. "You're the cereal girl?!"
Pyrrha didn't get a chance to respond. "Students, listen closely."
Penny, along with everyone else, turned as quickly as she could. Professor Goodwitch had a talent for getting all the attention she wanted the moment she wanted it.
"I'm sure you've all heard rumors about the assignment of teams. Well, allow me put an end to your confusion. You will all be given teammates... today."
As she and Professor Ozpin explained the rules of initiation, Penny knew that she was as thunderstruck as the rest of the students by the headmaster's words. Was this really a matter of random chance? They would just be launched into the forest and whomever they happened to meet first would be their partners? There was no way it could be that haphazard!
Penny gave Analysis most of her processing cycles, giving only the minimum to Tactical for situational awareness. (She distantly heard Jaune asking Professor Ozpin to define 'landing strategy,' which would have grabbed her immediate attention if she'd had the cycles to spare, but Tactical didn't see that data point as threatening and didn't escalate it.)
Penny knew her own landing strategy. She had her flight module loaded on her back with its wings retracted. (Which was another benefit to shifting her stow from her back to her forearm: it meant the flight module and stow weren't in competition.) Frankly, with that much maneuverability, she could easily defeat the system and pick her partner. Many of the students would have much less control over their flight characteristics. They would have landing strategies built around momentum control at the very end of their falls, or that relied upon using ground cover in some creative way.
Wait, was that it?
Launching students would naturally separate them based upon their landing strategies, like an enormous centrifuge. Those controlling their flight would end up further away from those in freefall. And that meant that students in those different range bands would end up together!
It just made sense. In a real mission where landing strategies had to be employed, a team with diverse landing strategies would scatter all over the place, whereas a team with similar strategies would land together and be able to immediately cohere and defend itself.
Satisfied that she had cracked the code, Penny rebalanced her processor loads more evenly and turned her attention back to her surroundings. She glanced down the line to her left at the students who would be launched in the first wave with her, paying less mind to the second and third waves that would be tackling the Forest after them.
The question, then, was: Which of these students had landing strategies of controlled flight? If Penny was meant to be with a partner who had maximum control of her descent, who could that be?
Unfortunately, there was no way to determine that by looking alone…
Ka-chunk.
The first catapult fired, then the next, on down the line faster and faster, launching students one after another into the Emerald Forest below. Penny, last in line, watched them go with increasing anticipation, eager to see what they all could do. Yang shot her a wink as her catapult fired; Penny smiled in return.
Jaune was still asking questions of the headmaster when his catapult fired and sent him pinwheeling towards the forest. Before Penny could feel alarm on his behalf, her own catapult activated.
There was momentary disorientation. Her gyro did not appreciate being at the mercy of forces she did not control, or at least did not understand. Well, she could fix that. Her wings extended and snapped into flight position and the jets activated. With a burst and a jolt, Penny entered flight mode.
Penny had known she could do this, she'd identified the code that would let her and knew it was within her capabilities.
Knowing that did not in any way prepare her for how fun it turned out to be.
She laughed aloud as she went from being almost helpless, at the whim of aerodynamics and launch forces, to having control over her own motion, greater control than she could imagine. The sky beckoned; the sun was as warm as the wind was cold. The sensation of speed was remarkable and the new perspective on things from above as they flew past her below was exhilarating.
Flying was just fun! Joyous! Exhilarating! Thrilling! Magnificent! Thesaurus had no end of words it could conjure to describe the feeling of flight, but fun seemed to fit best. Yes. Flying was fun. Especially when she could control it!
Wait—Jaune! He couldn't control anything!
She looped around and saw him tumbling out of control towards the forest. Whatever landing strategy he had didn't seem very effective; if he fell, soaking the impact would take a significant percentage of his Aura. She couldn't have that, not with an entire mission through the Forest still to go!
Right as she was bending into a dive to try and catch him, a javelin rocketed through the tree line and pinned him to the trunk of a tree.
Based on the weapon's coloration, she assessed with 70% confidence that it was Pyrrha's. Her respect for the girl rose greatly.
Unfortunately, this meant that neither Jaune nor Pyrrha had landing strategies that were matches for Penny's. Reluctantly, she swerved away from Jaune and looked far and wide to see where people had fallen and how.
Her partner, according to the headmaster's design, would be someone who'd flown very far and under great control. And as she looked, she saw to her sorrow someone who fit that exact combination of characteristics.
Because there, having flown further than anyone and bounding between artificial platforms in a display of total command, was Weiss Schnee.
"Why do you keep following me around?!"
"Would you believe me if I said it was coincidence?" Penny said with vain hope.
"You landed next to me," Weiss said with slow and deliberate enunciation. "That. Isn't. 'Coincidence'."
Penny couldn't even attempt to deny it. Jiminy wouldn't let her. "The other times were," she said.
"I can't believe this," said Weiss, who was pacing back and forth in the space between two trees. She looked like she was trapped between them, or perhaps like a ball bouncing back and forth between two walls. "I wasn't supposed to get someone like you for my partner. It was supposed to be Pyrrha."
"'Someone like me'?" Penny repeated, a new and unexpected emotion flaring up inside of her. It felt like heat. "And what am I, exactly?"
Weiss opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
Without anything fueling it, the hot feeling inside of Penny burned out. Systems returned to baseline—not as cheery as she'd prefer, but with a wariness appropriate for dealing with Weiss. "I may not be Pyrrha Nikos, but I promise you that I will try to be the best partner I can be."
Weiss stopped her pacing, and also pulled her hands apart. Penny hadn't even noticed her wringing her hands together until she stopped doing it.
"Do you mean that?" Weiss said cautiously.
"I am borderline incapable of lying," said Penny. Jiminy agreed.
Weiss rolled her eyes. "No need to be theatrical about it." She sighed. "Well, I suppose you'll do for now. Not like I have much choice in the matter, anyway."
Penny would have considered it a victory, albeit a small one, except Weiss turned away from Penny and started walking through the forest. "Where are you going?" said Penny.
"To the Forest Temple, of course," said Weiss sharply. "That's the objective of the exercise, isn't it?"
Except Weiss was walking in the wrong direction, Penny knew. They had been launched from west to east, and their destination was further east still, yet Weiss was somehow wandering to the north. Penny's internal navigation was very firm on that.
Penny ran some quick simulations on how it would go if she tried to tell Weiss this.
None of the simulations produced satisfying results.
Resigned to going in the wrong direction for now, Penny retracted her wings so they wouldn't clip on anything and reluctantly followed after Weiss.
"That's the last pairing," said Glynda. "Pyrrha Nikos and Jaune Arc. I can't help but feel we're doing Miss Nikos a disservice by allowing that pairing."
"Oh?" said Ozpin, flipping through views from different cameras scattered throughout the forest, and settling on the one that displayed Pyrrha retrieving Jaune from a tree. Jaune failed to catch himself when Pyrrha retrieved her weapon, forcing her to catch him a second time.
"According to his transcripts," Glynda said tersely, "Mr. Arc has a landing strategy rated for 100 meters. After what I just saw, I wouldn't trust him to jump down from a chair without hurting himself. On those grounds alone, he's not ready for Beacon, and if the rest of his skills are the same caliber, he's years from being ready for Beacon."
"Hm," said Ozpin.
"We can't expect Miss Nikos to carry him for four years."
"Luckily, I don't have that expectation," said Ozpin.
"Oh, because you expect him to wash out before then," said Glynda with real bite. "In that case, our thoughts are aligned."
Ozpin gave a slight smile, but explained no further.
Giving a hmph to express her irritation, Glynda returned her display to an overview of the training ground. "Nor would I call the Miss Schnee-Miss Pallas pairing a good thing. For either of them. It looks like it's already going poorly. They're headed in the wrong direction."
"Quite so," said Ozpin.
Glynda hesitated. "I know we stay hands-off in all but the most extreme cases, but if they keep going north, they'll go so far out of bounds that they might attract more dangerous attention. We curate some parts of the Emerald Forest, but not all of it."
"I know," said Ozpin.
She peered at him, trying to understand what he was thinking, but Ozpin had long ago perfected inscrutability. "We're just going to let them wander into the crash site, then?"
"We'll give them the chance to course-correct on their own," said Ozpin, watching the pair with great interest. "And the chance to see what happens when they don't."
Note: Penny's flight module is from the manga, and it is a delight- truly the gift that keeps on giving.
Next time: Flex