A month passed.
On some deep level, Penny wasn't entirely sure how a month had passed. It felt like, were she to add up her archived data since her awakening, it would sum up to far less than a month's elapsed time.
3G gradually had her adjust to something… resembling a normal life. A facsimile of any given citizen, going to work in the morning, coming home; eating or recharging, defragmenting or sleeping at night.
Rather than home, she had a lonely apartment. It was on the ninth floor, and had a quaint balcony, with which she was overlooking the night-time skyline of the city of Denver. Denver was… a nice city, she supposed.
It had no walls.
No Grimm.
Every moment that Penny was, that notion still ached within her. Was it right for her to drink of the safety and prosperity that 3G had brought to this world, when her Remnant was in the death throes of its civilization? Penny… she wanted to say…
She wanted to go back. She wanted to bring this paradise back.
…instead, she was alone, on this balcony, watching this city spin its way through another night. Hadn't she made friends? Charlotte didn't tell her name to just anyone—where was she? Penny didn't want to be by herself.
When she shut her eyes, and shared the room with nobody, she imagined that Ruby was there with her.
Rubywhohadnoeyes
She didn't want to be alone.
More time passed.
Penny went to work most days out of the week.
Some part of her felt… bad, about her form of employment. Like the employment was just handed out to her; given to her because she was special, because she wouldn't know how to get by, on her own, otherwise.
Then again, her work—as a 'junior research consultant' who worked from a local 3G field office—directly pertained to her unusual nature, both in dimension of origin and… her particular mode of construction.
In simpler words, her job was to answer questions about Remnant, and provide advice on ongoing research projects—the research into synthetic Dust, or Penny's own processor hardware, among others.
Her secret was kept even from many of her coworkers, like the receptionist, Marton, who watched her clock in every day. She pressed her employee badge against the turnstile, and just for her, it disabled the 'metal detectors.'
If anyone at work thought that her legs were unusual, they did not comment.
She was just like anyone else.
Going back to pretending did not make her feel very good.
Penny watched the canvas.
She had taken up art. Traditional painting, pigments upon canvas.
Remnant, and the people of Remnant. Its presence within her main processes took up an enormous portion of her processor cycles. Her choice in art, as a pastime was… it was as if she could take Remnant, and transfer it from her 'self' to some canvas, that she might ease the pressure it placed upon her.
She had started with acrylic, and painted far too slowly, with no plan at all. It had been unrecognizable.
Another material to paint with, the shattered moon, hanging above a woodland clearing.
Yet another, the city of Atlas, a monument to ingenuity and hubris alike.
Her favorite so far, the water-based gouache, with its colors so crisp, drawn with flat shading, flat lighting, and sharp lines, as part of the style she was crafting for herself.
With this material, this 'gouache,' she painted someone, rather than something, or a landscape.
Vivid red hues painted the bulk of her scythe, her cloak. Black filled the details of Crescent Rose, her hair, the clothes she wore. Red, and some of pink, the rose petals that drifted around her—suspended in motion without movement, around the edges of the canvas. She curled the blade of her scythe around the top, while its magazine broke the blank black of her midsection.
Ruby Rose.
Her palette box had silver paint. It had whites and grays, that she might recreate Ruby's eyes. But she… couldn't.
No matter what orders she gave to her hand, that brush never met canvas. It never even started.
"It looks good—hell, it looks amazin'," Charlotte said. She continued onwards, under her breath, not meant to be heard. "...She means a lot to ya', huh…"
Penny set the brush down, and fell backwards into her folding chair, and embraced the compliments—even if it would never be finished. She shut her eyes and let Charlotte's voice be her only sensation.
Charlotte spoke. She had been there for much, but not all of the promise, and she had things to say—insightful things—about so many different things. But she also had appreciation to share.
She spoke of Ruby, and Penny delighted in it.
For a time.
"...I cannot do it," Penny said, opening her eyes again. "I tried, but I can't do it."
Charlotte was frowning. "I, eh, Penny? You've already done it. This piece is great."
"Her eyes," Penny said. "I cannot draw her eyes—I can't remember Ruby's eyes."
Charlotte blinked slowly. She reached for her cup—coffee, not a hint of alcohol—and drank from it. Deeply. Slowly. "Are ya' like—having trouble with the anatomy? I'm not, uh, an expert there. You wanna model after my eyes?" she asked, pulling down her own shades.
"More than that," Penny said. "I…" she frowned. The secret of the silver eyes was lost to most of Remnant, let alone the people of another world. "Ruby's eyes are special," she said. "Like the G-Stone, they're the opposite of the Grimm."
Charlotte gave her an aside glance, scratching at her temple. It was rapt attention.
"...The virus created a replica of Ruby Rose, to—" Penny shut her jaw tight, and focused, and thought. These memories—Ruby asking why she left—they were not real. They didn't matter. Oh, how that notion echoed to Penny. "...attack my psyche. It was unable to recreate her eyes. But now, when I envision her—I cannot see her eyes either. Have- have I just forgotten her face? Or is this… damage… that the virus did to me?"
Then, there was that moment. When the simulation of Ruby had torn itself in half, and she had seen for that barest instant, the real, full Ruby Rose, turning back to Penny, eyes—eyes!—full of shock and horror.
"Oh, hon…" Charlotte muttered, shaking her head. She was smiling, but it was not a happy smile. "I think it's a little less serious than that."
"What do you mean?"
A scratch to her chin. A roll of her neck, and re-focusing on the canvas, where Ruby's face lie, incomplete. "...I think it's anxiety. Or, something like it. You're already worried about forgetting your home, ain'tcha? Then the virus shows you your girl like that—and you already know why that was—and the idea sticks. Besides…" she coughed. "Honestly, it looks kinda neat, as a style. A little less detail on the face in general, and you could just go without the eyes."
Penny turned to the canvas. She tried to envision the changes that Charlotte had commented on… she struggled for a moment, but perhaps it was worth trying. That said, it would be difficult to go back on the strokes already made. She sighed, or rather, engaged in a meaningful facsimile of one.
"Makes me wonder what it'd look like if you tried to draw sunglasses in that style…" Charlotte mused to herself, referencing her own choice in accessory. "...But that's not why you called me over to your place, is it? Not that I mind checking up on ya'."
"No, it is not," Penny turned away from the canvas.
The kitchen of her apartment had been supplanted by a kind of art room; she had no need for a fridge, a microwave, even a dishwasher, broadly; all furnishings that the apartment already had installed. The spare surfaces she had in the kitchen, be they cabinet shelves or countertops, held sketches, or supplies, while a patch of bare wall was reserved for when she framed any of her pieces.
"What's got you in a tussle, then?"
There was no reason for Penny to dance around it. "I am lonely," she said. "I have made friends—I hope," she paused.
Charlotte smiled, and assuaded her worries. "Of course ya' have."
"—with you, with Kou, with others among 3G. We talk frequently, but we do not meet frequently. Instead, in my day-to-day, I have my… coworkers." Penny frowned. "You know that I am classified. They don't know about me, and they can't know about me. For instance, my legs," she brushed her fingertips against where the synth-skin met cold metal. "They believe they are an assistive frame, like a wheelchair."
"Ah," Charlotte said, petitely. She stepped around the counter, and found herself sitting atop a stool, rather than leaned over said counter. "I can see it…"
Penny continued. "On Remnant, my nature was kept secret for a time; it was revealed to the public. It felt good… it felt very good to be free like that. Now I have to keep these secrets again, and I cannot connect with the people I see almost every day."
"Hon," Charlotte said, again, smiling. "We both already know Remnant's not going to stay classified forever, right? Even if it is a big decision, none of us are going to say no to you, uh… baring your guts, I guess, to the world." She shrugged. "And you're super goddamn cool."
Penny nodded. She didn't know if she was excited, for that to be unveiled to the public, or if she wanted to clad herself in trepidation and dread that day's approach. "It… it is still quite different, from Remnant. Artificial people here are already accepted; but now I am from another dimension. I traded one taboo for another."
Charlotte hummed her acknowledgement.
"Remnant cannot be kept a secret," she said, to which Charlotte nodded. "But when everyone knows I am from Remnant, they will look at me like they do Soldato J."
Last of his kind; prized warrior from another universe. Although he concerned himself not with the affairs of Earth, he still became quite a celebrity, an icon in popular culture. Penny… did not want to join him in that.
In reply, Charlotte merely sighed, at least at first. She folded up her sunglasses and stowed them within her jacket pocket. Her arms crossed themselves along the counter as she stooped down. "You know… I can relate. Not in the same way at all, but I still can. I'm a cyborg. Damn near a full-body one, and I don't just stop being one when I clock out. My face isn't plastered on the news like Guy or his cousin, but people can still look at me and see… well," she shrugged. "They can see metal bits, no offense."
Penny allowed it with a small nod.
"I do wish I could tell you that there's some secret, to get along with the civilian folks, but really… there isn't?" She tapped a finger methodically against the countertop. "You and I, we can both do crazy things. But the price of those crazy things, is that we give up our normalcy. We give up some of our connections to your average John. And it sucks."
Charlotte paused.
A few seconds passed.
She reached for her glass of water, took a sip, then pointed towards the unfinished image of Ruby Rose. "...but stuff like that, I guess you're showin' me that we can still live in a few odd ways, despite that. So yeah, keep it going." She smiled. "And besides. The world would be a better place if we were all a little more like you."
Penny had her reservations, but the genuine honesty writ about Charlotte's face made them hard to persevere with. "Could I tell my neighbors?" she asked.
"Er, sorry?"
"My neighbors," Penny repeated. "They are quite nice—and I feel bad that they don't know. They brought me meals, since I had just moved in, and… some of those are still in the fridge."
Charlotte glanced towards the fridge, and gave an experimental sniff.
They hadn't spoiled yet—Penny had checked.
Charlotte grunted. "I can't guarantee it, but… honestly, probably? There's a difference between telling every Tom, Dick, or Stanley, and letting your neighbors know." She looked away. "In my opinion. I'll ask around."
"Thank you."
At that, the two just smiled at each other, vaguely, for a few seconds.
A reminder made itself present inside Penny's awareness; a topic that she had intended to cover, after this conversation had ended. "There is one more thing," she said.
"Shoot me." Charlotte frowned. "Actually don't, those lasers would hurt."
Penny allowed a small laugh, at that. "Can I talk to Vasimir?"
Charlotte's partner, the 'Infiltrating Mechanoid.' Penny had heard of him, belatedly, but had never even seen him—even though the two were nearly inseparable. Such, Penny supposed, was the drawback of being the size of a proper mecha.
"Absolutely," the agent responded.
Clocking in to another day's work. Bringing an almost-empty lunch bag to one of the break room's fridges, such that her coworkers might not ask for her order—there were several groups, who split the bill on daily orders from restaurants—scanning her badge, and heading to the higher security, upper floors.
She had two tasks today, both of which she was more than excited about.
Nervous, as well.
First was a several-hours-long meeting, or debriefing, at a high level of classification. Penny knew that the members of 3G would be debriefing her, regarding the specifics of 3G's past operations; it was a signal of trust, that they were to tell her their own secrets, she supposed.
After that…
Some of the first samples produced by Project Stardust.
Synthetic Dust, at an economic scale, would have utterly revolutionized life on Remnant; here on Earth, they seemed to be assembling that impossibility on a scale of months or a short few years.
She then thought of her rocket boots, her flight, restored to her.
And she frowned, as the elevator continued upwards.
Penny had done an appreciable job of… not thinking about it. But, since the first day awakening, she had been very much damaged, wounded—unable to move, function, as she was built to. It stung, whenever she noted her thrusters that were software-safed, and covered up by modifications to her legs.
"Salutations," she said, as she stepped into the small meeting room. There was only one person here, a security guard she was not yet acquainted with.
He saluted, and stepped out, not cleared at the level the meeting required. She held the door for him, smiled and waved, and shut it.
It was a large room, and saw frequent use. This was the first of three meetings that it had booked today, at the tail end of the week. It was also the only meeting room in the building to be fully equipped for telepresence.
Each seat had a small hardware hookup, for recording video and audio, and playing back the audio of the meeting. At the end of the room, in the direction most chairs were aligned, an enormous screen would broadcast the videos of other members. Soon after Penny sat herself down, that exact screen powered on.
First there was one image, that of the president of the entire organization, Taiga. That one image swiftly became three, as Liger—Penny kept her face neutral—and Guy—Penny smiled—flickered into being.
Four, occupying the final quadrant of the screen, as the digital avatar of Tomoro-0117 popped in. Despite the abstract image, his picture was the clearest of them all.
Penny had talked to Tomoro only twice, since her reawakening, and both had been entirely on work terms. She had a note going into today's meeting to acquire his contact information, so she could make properly his acquaintance.
"Salutations," Penny said, the second time in as many minutes. "Are we all accounted for?"
Taiga nodded. "This meeting shall begin… now!" he thrust his finger into the air, in the direction of the camera.
Again, Penny smiled. The Gutsy Galaxy Guard were not an overly formal organization—they were a hierarchy, and he was her superior, but he didn't make much of it, nor did he tie himself down with organized language.
He was fiery, more so than most, but his raw passion for the work was no different from anyone else's.
"I am unsure as to the purpose of the meeting," Penny said. She knew it was to regale her with past information, classified, that she now had clearance for, but that could be any number of things.
Taiga nodded. "Today, we're going to tell you about how the Battle at Jupiter really went down."
Liger knitted his hands together, behind his back. "Indeed! Much of the specifications of the battle are public knowledge, but the exact method of our victory, and the nature of our threat—not the Primevals, but the Z-Master—are still classified."
The Z-Master? Penny had not heard that name before, not even overhearing dubiously-classified conversations at the office.
A sharp look came about Guy.
"To that end, I have prepared a short multi-video presentation using recorded battle data," Tomoro said.
The four-fold display split into a five-fold one, a new video feed set inside the center of the screen.
Guy spoke up, clearly reading from prepared notes. "The Battle at Jupiter was the final engagement with the 31 Machine Primevals, the progenitor of Pasder and the Zonder."
"It was my first joint operation with the people of Earth," Tomoro added immediately.
They regaled her with the tale of the Battle at Jupiter. Specifically…
The Machine Primevals had the ability to merge their bodies not just with technology, as the Zonder could, but near-any object, living or otherwise. On Earth, they had taken over pieces of technology and historical wonders alike.
At Jupiter…
3G had done battle against the Primeval Moons. She had known the capabilities of 3G were impossible, from KouRyuu's display of her weapon; however, she also saw Tomoro's ultimate weapon, the J-Quath, in full use. It destroyed Ganymede.
It was a celestial body, an object drifting in space that had its own gravity, gravity enough to turn it round. Its sheer mass, of rock and metal, was expressed in scientific notation.
Penny internally revised her estimates of her own safety on Earth, as she watched the destruction of another moon through cameras attached to the hulls of 3G's spacecraft.
Despite everything, the power of the Primeval Moons had been too much for 3G to stand against; at first.
They explained the existence of a mysterious, mystical source of energy built into Jupiter, aptly titled THE POWER. By channeling this energy, 3G's Mobile Unit had empowered themselves enough to fight back against the moons.
Two mecha, which Penny did not recognize, were ambushed by two different moons ramming them. They caught the moons, stopping them in their tracks, and physically pushing them back, before destroying them.
A lucky maneuver after that allowed the Primevals to damage Tomoro's body, the mecha known as King J-Der, exposing the chamber where the inert, purified forms of the defeated Primevals had been stored.
From there… all thirty-one Primevals in one place, the Primevals were able to combine, channeling the mysterious energy of THE POWER to become one.
That was the Z-Master.
If she knew true security, true safety, at the hands of 3G, then now she knew what abject evil was, what the truest form of horror cosmic was, beyond any Grimm or immortal witch, beyond belief, beyond possibility, in the form of the Z-Master. One eye, wide wings, clawed hands…
…and physically, comparable in size to Jupiter itself. Several Earths would fit in the palm of the Z-Master's hand, great fingers that would crush anything that ever lived—not just on Earth, but on any world—in a miniscule motion.
There was a pause, an intermission. It wasn't only Penny, who had to take a moment to gather themself.
Guy had lost his father in this same mission, and he was not hiding it about his face.
The Z-Master was impossible to fight. But it was actively using THE POWER as an energy source, 'veins' plugged into the atmosphere of Jupiter—veins through which 3G exploited its size, sending their mecha inside its bodies.
There they fought, and defeated avatars of the separate Primevals again, on their path to the core of the Z-Master, the Heart Primeval.
At the heart chamber, a small conversation was had—and the Heart Primeval revealed the Z-Master's combined intentions. Fusing all life in the universe, abandoning all love and hope, reducing all life to unthinking… machines.
And then, the Z-Master intended to travel to the next universe, and repeat the cycle anew. Had those aliens arrived on Remnant, prior to this universe…
The Z-Master was destroyed, in what seemed like a sacrificial maneuver, King J-Der—the fused form of Tomoro, Kaidou, and Soldato J-002—channeling the entirety of THE POWER's infinite energy to destroy the Z-Master from within.
She had to wonder how those three had survived, how they were still here—she would have to ask.
Penny still struggled to process… that. A battle on the scale of moons was impossible to envision, despite having seen direct video footage of that—and the fight against the Z-Master had been even greater than that.
Taiga bowed his head, allowing all that several moments to stew. Then he raised himself fully to standing, clenching a fist upwards in some kind of defiance. "After the Z-Master's defeat, we constructed the ultimate weapon of humanity's defense, should a threat on the Z-Master's level appear again… the Goldion Crusher."
A single weapons to defeat… that? Penny stared. "What?"
The gynoid from Remant had taken some time to gather herself, after the meeting, then disconnected.
She had more work to do; some samples from Project Stardust had been delivered to her office. They were due for testing, with her supervision, and she was due to write a report on their functioning.
That left Liger, Taiga, Guy, and Tomoro, all together. Those first three were in the same room together, with only Tomoro's presence, as always, remote.
"THE POWER…" Liger mused. "Penny's schematics, you know, they say she cannot function without an artificial Aura—a soul, in other words."
"She has a soul," Guy crossed his arms.
Liger shrugged. "Be that as it may—"
"It be," Guy hissed under his breath, then chuckled at the grammar of his statement.
"—she does not have Aura, but she's still functional, hm?" He twirled his moustache. "Now, as I am a man of science, I loathe to admit it, but there's inarguably something… mystical about THE POWER."
Everyone with a head, and neck, nodded.
Tomoro, who was a supercomputer with an avatar in the form of a glowing orb surrounded by spires of multicolored light, offered an "Indeed," instead.
"Is it not possible that Aura—which is the soul, or the 'light of life itself'," Liger continued, with finger quotes to provide emphasis. "—manifests in one universe, while within ours, it takes the form of THE POWER, instead?"
Taiga drummed the table. "Penny's self-worth was deeply, deeply tied to the existence of her Aura."
Guy coughed. "Which is a bad thing."
The two blinked, and glanced at him.
Tomoro's voice cut in, before anyone else could speak up. "This is true. Say you were to introduce her to the connected Aura-POWER theory. In that case, you would be tying her identity to a separate form of external verification. If she then found herself near Jupiter, and failed to demonstrate a reaction with THE POWER…"
Guy nodded. "She's the only one who can decide if she's real. Internal verification, like you said."
Taiga cleared his throat. "Then, until further notice—such as an improvement in Penny's mental health—we are shelving the discussion and research of this POWER-Aura interconnectedness theory."
Liger leaned back in his seat, enough that it creaked long and loud. "Roger."
