One month earlier:
Penny did not have the capacity to feel. Not physically, at least.
Theoretically, she had all the same range of emotions as non-synthetic people, even if she had yet to experience them all firsthand. So she knew what happiness felt like, and the way it was shaped like her father's smile when he laughed. Shapes were her favorite way to describe her feelings. It made it easier to feel things when she wanted to feel them.
If she was feeling sad, she'd imagine the shape of her father's smile to feel better. Or maybe the glint in Yang's eyes moments before she told a joke. Ooh! Or maybe Blake's subtle ear twitches hidden beneath her bow while gushing about a book she just read. And how could Penny possibly forget Weiss' blushing cheeks whenever one of her teammates complimented her in combat class?
Even if Penny was only allowed on campus once or twice before the tournament (heavily monitored, of course), she had so many happy shapes to choose from. The only angry shape she could think of was Torchwick… just everything about him. Maybe she should try to look harder for other feelings, to balance that out.
If she was feeling lonely, or doubting herself, she'd imagine the exact dimensions of Ruby's hands. Ruby shapes were the best, because they were secretly a whole bunch of feelings stuffed all together like a package deal. Joy, acceptance, friendship, and… some other, fuzzy sensation Penny hadn't been able to pin down yet. Whatever it was, it was a good feeling.
A really good feeling. The most sensational one so far.
But she didn't have a sense of touch. Or smell. Or taste. Missing those three out of five senses wasn't too bad, especially when her optical and auditory sensors were much more powerful than an average human's (and most faunus'). That didn't stop her from wondering what she was missing out on, though.
Would her feelings be stronger if her shapes could be more than just images and sounds? What would happiness look like if she knew what warmth was? How it felt against her skin, and in her hair. How does warmth change a smile, and how is it different from a cold one?
Were Ruby's hands warm when she held Penny's and told her the most important words Penny had ever heard? Would the shape of that memory (that Penny saved several backups of in case of memory corruption) be sweeter if she knew what Ruby's cloak smelled like, or how soft it felt?
She didn't like thinking about that too hard. When she did, she'd think of Ruby's hands again and remember how beautiful Ruby's shape was, all by herself (smelling and touching and tasting Ruby not required).
But sometimes, she couldn't stop herself from feeling things. Sometimes, shapes were painful to learn.
Before her fight with Pyrrha, Penny only had two shapes of fear. Mister Ironwood's disappointed glare after she was picked up from the docks, and the shape of a truck bulldozing towards Ruby after she had fallen on the road.
After her fight with Pyrrha, Penny lost count of her fear shapes. It was only milliseconds, almost imperceptible to the human eye. But Penny's memories had timestamps, and in times of danger, her processors overclock to find a solution, slowing down everything, stretching out every moment to nanoseconds.
To the audience in the arena, Penny's dismemberment took approximately fifteen seconds.
To Penny, it felt like hours.
From that elongated stint of time, fear became the shape of her own swords spinning around her, the strings constricting so tightly that they cleaved through aura and titanium like it was nothing but tin and aluminum.
Fear was the sound of a million error messages blaring through her HUD, alerting her as her systems all failed one by one in a domino effect.
Fear was the color of emerald eyes, widening with horror, while the champion's red hair billowed in the wind.
Fear was the collective silence of hundreds of people, before everything went black.
Those shapes flew by in her mind as Penny sparked back to consciousness. Her aura level was low, but charging up slowly. She tried to open the shutters in her eyes, but found herself completely disconnected from them. Her other sensors were down as well. She could not hear, she could not see—
Those two senses were the only ones Penny had. Without them, she was nothing. Nothing but an abstract shape floating in a near senseless void.
Was this what death was shaped like? Or was this the shape of sleep?
Either way, she did not like it. She wanted her father's smile back. She wanted to hold Ruby's hands. The memories of those shapes alone weren't enough anymore. She needed them now.
A foreign entity poked into the void, a packet of ones and zeroes she could not read without her sensors to decrypt it. A voice followed soon after, the only noise she could hear—the only sensation she could feel at all.
"Can you hear me?" asked the voice. It was unfamiliar, but had the unmistakable cadence of an Atlesian accent.
"Yes!" she responded immediately, the connection to her speakers suddenly blipping online. "What's happening? Am I back in Atlas?"
A pause. "Not exactly," the voice replied slowly. "There was an accident. Do you remember?"
She wished she did not. It would not stop replaying in her mind, her current sensory deprivation giving her processors nothing to do but poke holes in what she should have done to prevent it. But Penny did not say all of that. She simply said, "Yes, I remember."
"Well," the voice continued. "Much happened after your fight. Beacon was attacked. Many lives were lost."
"What?" she exclaimed, the voice's sudden declaration becoming a new shape of worry all by itself. "What happened?"
"It would be easier to show you all at once, rather than explain it piece by piece." Another pause. "Have you noticed the data I've sent you?"
The package floated there in the void. She couldn't see what was inside, not without opening it and downloading it directly. While she normally wouldn't hesitate to open it, none of her systems were online besides her core and speaker. That meant her firewalls were offline, and she didn't have a way of scanning it for malware or corrupted code.
Ironwood and her father had been very particular about downloading anything without verifying its security first. Despite her worry for her friends and Beacon, she didn't recognize the voice. Before she did decided anything, she needed to know one thing:
"Who is this?"
A third pause. "Penny," the voice began, sounding hurt by her question. "You mean you don't recognize me?"
Penny buffered. Out of all of the responses the voice could have given, that one left her reeling. "Um… I… no?" She was confused. She'd never forgotten someone before. That wasn't something she thought she could do. She could recite entire transcripts of every conversation she'd ever had. She had databases filled with just people's faces, names, and other metadata.
But the voice wasn't matching anyone's she had records of. Was she broken?
"Oh, Penny," the voice said softly. "I was worried there'd be some data loss after your fight, but I never imagined it would be this bad."
Data loss? Penny sent a query to begin a subroutine to scan her memory for data loss, before she immediately remembered she couldn't do that. All of her systems were offline. All she could do was scour through all the shapes she had collected herself. Nothing missing popped out to her, but if data had been lost, if memories had been corrupted—
How would she even know? How could she recognize the absence of a shape she could not remember?
"I… I don't… what do I do? I don't want to forget anyone."
"Fortunately, you won't have to," the voice said confidently, with a twinge of something else Penny couldn't identify. "In the packet, I've attached some backups recovered from the Atlas flagship. You did a diagnostic scan before every fight in the tournament, correct? So it should have everything before your accident."
That… that was true! Ironwood and her father wanted her to be tip-top shape, 100% combat ready for every round. She reached for the packet instinctively, her fear of losing any shapes exceeding her caution.
Besides, this voice, whoever they were, clearly knew her. Spoke so familiar with her, and knew about Atlas protocols, and was likely an Atlesian himself. And in this void, where she was so full of uncertainty and had so few options to move forward, she found only one choice available to her, one she knew Friend Ruby would always encourage her towards:
She chose trust.
She opened the data packet, and began the download.
All at once, many things clicked together for Penny. Awful things. Horrible realizations that seemed too nightmarish to feel real.
Beacon was attacked… by Atlas!
Mister Ironwood used his security clearance to hack into the CCT network and ruin global communications. Using military transports, the Atlesian army brought Grimm directly into the city, and helped Grimm breach past Vale's defenses without detection.
Mister Ironwood was always a bit strict, maybe even scary sometimes, but this… she never could have imagined him capable of such things. All those Valean citizens butchered… for what?
As more information passed into her mind, other data slowly seeped through the cracks. It pooled into her core and she felt new shapes solidify inside.
By the time the data had finished installing, Penny was on the verge of metaphorical tears. Not only because of the role her home had in the fall of Beacon—destruction orchestrated by people she trusted—but also because she suddenly remembered whose voice was speaking to her, now that her shapes had been restored. She felt awful. How could she possibly forget—
"Dad," she said, voice cracking through her speakers. "I'm so sorry. I should have been there! I should have done something!"
"It's okay, Penny," the voice—her father—said quickly. "What matters is you're safe—"
Suddenly, most of Penny's systems came online, her sensors rapidly absorbing the derelict workshop her body found herself inside, partially laid out on some sort of workbench.
Her father continued, the shape of his voice finally complete with the shape of his face peering over her with his signature, bushy brown mustache and mischievous grin, "And we have so much work to do."
The next few weeks were an awkward transition for Penny. While mandated isolation to hide herself from the rest of the world was familiar to her, the context as to why had shifted drastically.
Before, she had been a highly classified military project, known only by a select, chosen few. A team of scientists, engineers, and high ranking military personnel all promising Penny that she had been built for a noble purpose. That one day, it would be her job to save the world.
Now, she was hiding from those very same people. From Atlas. Her home.
Saving the world meant abandoning everyone she'd ever known.
At least, almost everyone. She was very relieved to discover that her father had defected from the military after Beacon's fall, and had salvaged her from Amity before it could return to Atlas. Even if he had seemed… different than the last time she saw him in person. She couldn't quite pinpoint what was exactly different about him (her database certainly found no discrepancies), but at the very least he acted differently.
He smiled far less, for one. He didn't check in with her as much, or offer many words of encouragement. He hadn't told her, "I love you," even once since she came back online.
That made her sad in a way she couldn't give a shape to. It was too empty of a feeling to solidify, too devoid of any color to paint clearly. It was just… a grey, formless blob.
She hoped it was just the atmosphere of his new workshop causing him to act so aloof with her. She didn't like to explore the alternatives, that he might've been disappointed with her, or loved her any less for how little she accomplished at Beacon.
The workshop certainly decreased her own morale (a deficit of at least 36% of her normal positivity levels). It was nothing like either of her father's workshops back in Atlas and Mantle.
His Atlas lab was one of the most advanced, state of the art facilities in all of Remnant, full of sleek, pristine walls and warehouses full of resources for experimenting with Penny's design.
And his more homely, humble clinic in Mantle wasn't bad either. It may not have had as much funding (and Penny wasn't allowed to visit it as often), but it was a bright and vibrant place full of father's little touches and favorite knickknacks. It may have been smaller than his Atlas facility, but it was so much more alive.
The workshop she found herself in now, on the other hand, felt dead inside. Devoid of most color, crammed full of scrap parts and electrical safety violations, the space seemed haphazardly assembled. Even when the floorboards and ceiling tiles of her father's clinic fell apart, it seemed less dangerous—and ominous—than the place she now resided.
The mannequins didn't help either. Though her sensors detected organic compounds in them, her father had assured her they were just testing dummies for his prosthetics experiments. He joked that she was far more alive than them.
If he had meant the joke as comforting, it didn't come across that way. No matter how much he chuckled at the comment at the time, the tone had unsettled Penny's circuits. Her father had developed a far darker sense of humor than he had before she left.
Maybe that's what war does to people. Find humor within the horror. A coping mechanism.
One day, while her father was testing her systems yet again (he was worried that the spare parts he'd installed weren't up to par with Atlas', and wanted to verify there were no compatibility issues), something new happened:
A visitor came to the workshop.
Her father had been very strict since she came back online, not letting her out of the workshop for any reason. Whenever he left, she was expected to go into sleep mode to run diagnostics. She understood the necessity of upping maintenance on her body (they didn't have the same vast resources Atlas did, after all), but the distance growing between her and her father had become worrisome.
So, when her father informed her that someone important would be visiting soon, proof that the outside world still existed (and that, one day, she may even get to return to it), she couldn't resist bouncing her servos from side to side, an electric giddiness she needed to shake through her whole body.
"Penny!" her father scolded. "Behave yourself."
She locked her servos steady, her joy dimming at her father's dismissive tone. "Okay, dad. I'm sorry."
He sighed, but said nothing more.
Her excitement returned in full force, however, when the large, metal doors to the workshop swung open, and the important visitor entered through (emphasis on important, her father was very clear on that).
An imposing woman drifted into the chamber, the tail of her black dress trailing behind her. Impossibly pale skin contrasted by the dark coloration of her visible, bulging veins. Amidst this clash of white and black, the only splashes of color were the bright, red jewelry that matched the blood red shade of her eyes.
In an instant, Penny recognized her. If she had lungs, she'd be breathless.
"Winter?" Penny asked softly, opening her database to verify against her disbelief. "Is that really you?"
Winter cocked an eyebrow, glanced briefly at her father, and responded, "Yes, Penny. It is I… Winter." She smirked slightly as she said this, and that was all the invitation Penny needed before she rushed forward and wrapped Winter in a tight hug.
Her father sputtered behind her, words failing him in a mix of half curses and choked garbling. She didn't immediately understand why he had gotten so flustered, but then she remembered what he told her earlier in preparation:
That her hugs were rude, painful, and inappropriate. For today's visitor, especially, she was not to initiate any hugs without permission.
She pulled back, utterly ashamed at how quickly she went against her father's wishes (he'd been even more upset with her now, oh no), but Winter's hands stopped her retreat, and yanked her back into the embrace.
Penny glanced up, and detected no anger or disgust in Winter's expression. On the contrary, Penny had never seen Winter smile so openly before. With how her father's face straightened out to something more stoic and reserved behind them, it seemed as though Winter and her father had swapped personalities with each other while Penny was out of commission.
She didn't complain, though, as her proximity sensors informed her that one of Winter's hands had begun stroking her hair. While she couldn't feel it (just like she couldn't feel hugs, unfortunately), the gesture was very appreciated. It made her feel more human, like she mattered just as much as a real person, especially as her father had been far more withholding with his own affections for the past few weeks.
"I thought I'd never see you again, Winter," Penny said, sinking more into Winter's arms, letting the proximity pings wash over her HUD with a sigh. "Did you defect from Atlas, too?"
Winter took a few moments to respond, a haze clearing from her eyes." Yes, yes I did."
Winter was Ironwood's most trusted lieutenant, and she knew Winter held him with similar regard. She couldn't imagine what betraying him must have been like for Winter, especially since—
"And Weiss?" Penny asked abruptly. "What about her? Is she here?" She had to know.
"Weiss?" Winter asked with a frown, looking again to her father.
He cleared his throat. "I'm afraid Winter's sister…" He trailed off, struggling to say the next words. "She made her choice, Penny. And it wasn't the right one."
"Oh." That was Penny's only external reaction. Internally, she had to drag every shape she had of Weiss to a different file folder in her mind, as all the joy she once felt at the heiress' visage became suddenly tainted, twisting to some emotions she had only felt very, very recently:
Loss. Betrayal. And a bit of… anger, too. Lumped all together, she didn't feel any one of those things exclusively. It just hurt.
She hugged Winter tighter. She wished the action made her feel any different, like it did for other people. Her proximity sensors could only do so much for her, and it felt more like playing pretend rather than anything real.
After a while of just festering there, letting Winter become her anchor as she processed that hurtful news regarding Weiss' allegiance, she heard her father say something she could not quite catch. Before she could replay the sound, everything went dark and she found herself shutting down to sleep mode once more.
She awoke much later, her internal clock informing her it had been a few hours before she rebooted.
Oh… not this glitch again.
It had occurred often after father first woke her up. Her body would suddenly shut down, seemingly at random, and then wouldn't start up again for a random interval of time. She had hoped he'd fixed it for the last time in her most recent diagnostic and patch update, but no such luck.
"Where's Winter?"
Her father, hunched over as he read files on one of his computers, didn't turn to look at her as he replied, "She left, Penny. She has important work to do as the leader of our… resistance."
That was new information. She wondered briefly why father hadn't told her that sooner, but she was sure he had his reasons.
She'd normally try to hover over whatever her father was working on, in an attempt to coax any sort of social interaction with him (she hadn't played any board games with him in forever), but she couldn't find the energy to do it. The revelation about Weiss left her processors whirring into overdrive. Scenario after scenario spiraled through her mind, wondering what fates could have befallen the rest of her friends.
Were they dead? Had some joined Ironwood's army? She didn't think the rest of team RWBY were capable of such things, but she hadn't thought Weiss capable of it either (even if Atlas was her home kingdom, she thought Weiss was better than that). Without Weiss, Penny would have never even met Ruby—
And asking anyone about Ruby's status was terrifying. She wasn't worried about her joining Ironwood (she knew as an objective fact that was impossible). But if anything had happened to Ruby in the beacon attack, if she had been hurt badly—or worse—then… then—
Penny wouldn't think like that. Ruby was alive. She had to be. Any other outcome was unacceptable.
Her father interrupted her thoughts with a request. "Penny, come over here. I have some thoughts I need to work out."
A little less enthused than she'd normally be at her father wanting to talk with her, she slunk to his side. "Of course. What do you need to verify?"
Since their defection from Atlas, her father no longer had access to most of his former resources. That included all the databases full of his notes on Penny's development and software. Fortunately, Penny's core had copies of many of those notes, but not all (the actual design of her aura core was deemed too classified to be stored offsite). She had been glad to send him all the data she did have stored, however, and he had spent much of his time pooling over it to figure what was causing her glitches, and so he could make more compatible replacement parts.
Her father was currently reading through documentation surrounding the aura transfer device, as well as his notes on how to best utilize it for fixing Penny in times of emergency.
He pointed out a specific subsection and said, "Here. I've been double checking my work, in case I made any mistakes in need of correction… though I've found none so far." He mumbled that last part, as though frustrated at his own spotless research. "Since I had to make the aura transfer device with less… adequate parts than I would normally, I was wondering if perhaps the aura transfer itself was to blame for your episodes."
"That seems unlikely. The shutdown hasn't had any effect on my aura levels. That points more towards a hardware or software issue."
He nodded, unsurprised. "Yes, I thought so, too. But I'm running out of things to check. Just wanted to cover all my bases." His voice picked up, a bit more engaged. "I was also looking into the side effects of cross-aura contamination in your core."
"Oh?" Cross-aura contamination referred to Penny's aura core being reignited by someone other than her father's aura. It was unclear what effect using aura from multiple donors would have on Penny's own aura—or even her own mind! Her father normally strayed away from such research, not seeing a need to pursue it any further.
"With how much aura I've had to sacrifice to keep you operational, I'm not sure I'd survive another aura transfer if you broke again."
Every subroutine in Penny's mind froze. "What? That's awful!"
"Yes, it is not ideal, is it? That's why I was hoping to find any workarounds for the cross contamination issue."
"I see," Penny replied slowly. Aura contamination effects hadn't been tested much. Aside from the ethical issues of needing to permanently remove aura from people, there was no telling what effects that kind of testing would have on Penny.
Would she even be the same girl anymore? How many times could her aura be switched out before she became someone else entirely?
She shook her head, not wanting to think about that paradox any further. "It's okay, dad," she said evenly. "I won't disappoint you again. Next time, I'll be combat ready for real so you won't have to worry about me."
Her father stared at her for a few moments, blankly absorbing her response. "I see," he said.
The rest of the day passed silently. He asked her no further questions.
Present:
"Salutations!" Penny said cheerfully.
She had been anxiously waiting for this meeting ever since her father told her about it a few days ago. He cleared her status as 'acceptable' and informed her that she was ready to meet the rest of the resistance.
The chance to leave the workshop and have social interactions was almost exciting enough for her to jump up in the air and tackle her father in a thankful hug (but she knew he didn't like those, so she settled on just jumping up and down a few times).
So far, she already had three more people to socialize with (a 150% increase)! In a strange turn of fate, she already knew them, too. At least, in passing.
Of the three, there was a young, grey haired man named Mercury, a third year Haven student she had seen occasionally during the tournament. They had never spoken with each other before the Fall, and she hadn't really paid much attention to him during that time until his fight with Yang (she hoped his new legs weren't because of Yang, that would make her sad).
Mercury wasn't very talkative (at least so far), mostly ignoring Penny's pre-prepared ice breakers. Questions about his home and family only made him close himself off more, glowering at her when she tried prying any further.
Hopefully he just missed them, and her bringing it up was making him home sick. The alternative was that she struck a nerve because they… weren't around anymore (maybe that's why he joined the resistance). That thought made Penny even more thankful she still had her father to latch onto through all this.
Maybe she could share him with Mercury? Was that how families worked? When she asked her father that directly, the offended look he gave her told her that, no, that probably wasn't how families worked.
It broke a choked laugh out of Mercury, though, even if he went back to glaring at her seconds afterwards. Whether he liked it or not, she would wear him down until they became friends. It was inevitable.
Secondly, there was a tall, broad shouldered man with dark, brown hair and hardened, hazel eyes. That, of course, could only be Beacon Academy's one and only Professor Port! She only had the privilege of visiting one of his lectures before the tournament, but it was a truly memorable experience (full of completely fictitious exploits involving nonsensical physics straight out of a cartoon Ruby would enjoy).
Upon seeing him when she entered the meeting room, she'd been excited to hear one of the many boisterous tales from his youth (whether they were factually accurate or not). But it seemed the Fall of Beacon affected the Professor the same way it had changed her father.
Gone was the bombastic, happily outspoken man she remembered laughing at his own jokes while commentating the tournament. He only nodded at her, and was somehow more closed off than Mercury.
Thirdly was the eccentric Professor Oobleck. While most of the other students seemed to have trouble following the pace of his lessons back at Beacon, Penny had no issue keeping up at the time (even if she did have to overclock her processors a couple times to match him).
Now, he seemed just as excitable, yet… his smile was far more unsettling than Penny remembered it being. The pale yellow of his eyes tracked her every movement like a predator. And she wasn't just saying that because he was a scorpion faunus, that would be rude (wait, how come she'd never noticed that before?).
However, even if she wanted to talk to him more, father specifically forbade her from interacting with Oobleck. She didn't understand why at the time… but as his tongue raked across his lips, head tilting as he tried to get a better look at her…
Maybe her father had the right idea about him.
Penny was disheartened at her lack of progress in befriending the rest, but she knew tensions were high with the Atlas conflict. Perhaps time—and more frequent interaction—would thaw out their frozen demeanor. She just had to keep an open mind and the most electrically positive attitude she could synthesize!
So when the doors opened, signifying the arrival of even more people to interact with, Penny couldn't stop herself from calling out to them with her signature greeting. She recognized Winter at the front of the new arrivals and was about to lunge forward with a hug (since Winter liked them last time), but her entire body locked up as her eyes took in the other two arrivals.
Penny recognized the woman on Winter's right as one of Mercury's teammates, Cinder Fall. Normally, she would have fretted over the new injuries of a potential new friend (and what she could only assume was some kind of experimental prosthetic, despite how it made her targeting software go haywire), but the sight of the third woman stole all of her focus.
Mint green hair, dark skin, bright red eyes.
A pair of revolvers that curved into twin scythes.
And those hands—
Penny could never mistake the shape of those hands. The way they perfectly fit into her own.
"Ruby," she said softly, and everything finally felt right in the world.