Chapter Text
/Boot up
As a kingdom, Atlas was a cold place. Surrounded by snow and ice on all sides, it was often said that only the fires of industry and ambition kept its people warm. James Ironwood did not agree with this notion. What kept it warm was the people . In struggling as one against the ever present frost, and the ever hungry grimm that forever threatened to encroach upon their lives, the people were what kept Atlas from freezing into uncaringness.
It had been something that was forgotten during The Great War, and even to this day the scars of this mindset remained– Atlas’ people often remained… chilled , to outsiders and to each other. James had made it his life’s goal to rectify this fact.
“All that so I can tell myself I hate to do this,” He sighed to himself, pulling away from the window he’d been staring out of, “Seems Oz’s dramatic flair has infected me…” Walking around his desk, he picked up his tablet and scanned it. Mechanical fingers scrolled through dozens of notifications, mails, reports and applications requiring his signature, all in search of a very specific one.
Holding back a grimace at yet more of that damn Schnee’s requests– demands in all but name and redaction –and actual demands of explanation from the council, James went through the list a second time, as if what he was searching for would magically appear. But no, the world was hardly ever this kind.
Putting down the tablet, he sighed and straightened his uniform. Like a flick of a switch, James Ironwood was gone, replaced by General Ironwood, “Reschedule my meetings for today,” He said to his secretary as he stepped out of his office, “If there are any issues, direct their calls to my scroll.” Dutiful as ever, the man nodded and immediately began to do as he was asked.
Ironwood’s trip to the science division was a quick one, helped by the fact he made use of his personal manta to cut down the hour long walk down to a ten minute long flight. As expected, the men and women stationed in the building where Atlas’ technological superiority was made reality one prototype at a time were shocked to find him arriving here unannounced, “Where is Professor Polendia?” were the only words he spoke to anyone, and always the answer was the same: ‘His laboratory’.
“Pietro,” General Ironwood said, far too coldly for James’ tastes, as he entered the genius’ laboratory without preamble, “I need answers.”
The bone deep sigh he received in response told him that Atlas would not be made any warmer by this discussion…
-[||]-
Dark winds howled in the darkness with such force that one would be forgiven to think that Beowulves were baying at Atlas’ doors, an oppressive mass of shapeless shadows doing all it could to break down the walls that protected its citizens from the elements. But the truth of it was far less fantastical.
As the northernmost kingdom, the nights in Atlas were dark things. Not to mention that within the city that gave the kingdom its name, the light pollution smothered the stars’ light. As for the howling? The cold season, which still held the land in its grip, was rife with storms and blizzards. The likes that could easily mask Remnant’s shattered moon.
Regardless of the why and how, however, the weather was most fitting when it came to the man advancing through the stark, clinically white corridors of the Top Secret wing of the Atlesian Military’s research center. Had anyone been here to see them, the blindingly white light fixtures of the hallway would have cast Pietro Polendia’ s features in a bizarre gloominess.
None of the man’s gregarious and jovial nature could be seen, instead replaced by spiralling thoughts as dark and thunderous as the winds beyond these walls. Within the confines of his mind he cursed. Spitting on the name of Atlas’ council, spitting on even Jame’s name! How dared they demand answers from him!? Did they think that if he had any to give, he wouldn’t already have? Did they think he enjoyed having to flay his daughter’s body, take her apart bit by bit in an attempt to understand?
“Damn them all.” He grumbled, before sighing. He was being unfair, he knew this. Especially in James’ case. The man had no love for his act as ‘The General’ when interacting with friends, something that Pietro knew Ironwood saw him as.
James was merely doing his job. Pleasant or unpleasant, he always would so that Atlas would prosper. It just happened that Pietro found himself in the middle of one such unpleasant situation.
Penny, his creation. A mechanical human being possessed of her very own soul and thinking mind– his daughter in all but blood –had been scheduled for testing. A small combat exercise between her and a full squad of standard combat droids. Frankly, calling it a test was something of an insult, she’d long cleared this threshold. But this was meant to showcase Project P.E.N.N.Y’s worth. A show meant to secure funding and goodwill from council members.
But that didn’t happen. One moment, his daughter was excitedly speaking to him about her small chat with specialist Schnee when the woman happened to be visiting. The next, she slumped against the wall and then to the floor mid-syllable, her green eyes filling with glowing static of the same colour…
They’d canceled everything and moved her to his lab. At first, Pietro thought that she’d been hacked. As the world’s most advanced, and living, android, it was both the first thing that came to mind, and the most ridiculous possibility. But considering the timing, he and Ironwood’s first thoughts turned to sabotage, after all he–
He– he hated to say as much, even within the confines of his mind. But Pietro had a backdoor to Penny’s mind. One that could be used to control her remotely, even shut her down. He would never, of course! It had been a leftover precaution from the project’s earlier scope, before it grew as it had.
But it remained there nonetheless. He’d thought about removing it multiple times, but fear stayed his hand each and every time. Not of what could happen should Penny ever become a danger– that idea was laughable –but of tempering with her code. What if this caused a key part of his daughter to change irrevocably? What if by removing it, she became someone else?
Moving from these thoughts, Pietro rounded a corner and noticed the faint sound of running water on the very edges of his hearing. Had someone forgotten to turn off a sink?
It said much about his state of mind that he ignored it, where he normally would have gone to close it off. Where was he? Ah, yes. The hacking– it wasn’t that, and a closer look to her code seemed to reveal nothing either.
So they slowly began taking Penny apart. Bit by bit, layer by layer. Until all that was left in the maintenance pod that served as her bed was a skeleton, its mechanical bones exposed to the world as vein-like wires weaved between them. A skeleton whose heart, its A.U.R.A generator, pulsed quietly within its ribcage. Alive.
A skeleton that had only kept its face. Pietro… He– he simply couldn’t. He’d already tore out too much from Penny. To remove her face, it was– it was too much.
But still, the issue persisted. Still, she wouldn’t wake up. And now, the council was demanding answers. Too much funding had been funneled down the project. The skeptics wanted to know they hadn’t wasted money on a pipe dream. The detractors– those paid off by Jacque –saw a chance to discredit both Ironwood and him.
“Was this how you felt, old friend?” Closing his eyes, he stopped his moving chair short of being able to see his laboratory’s door, his thoughts turning to Watt. Of the man’s growing frustration regarding ‘The Brass’s’ ever growing demands, of having to accommodate every request and give them what they wanted– until satisfying them was all but impossible.
They’d exhausted every avenue short of completely rebooting Penny. Which was nothing less than murder as it involved shutting down the source of her power and aura… Every avenue except one.
They’d checked for traces of a hack, yes. But ever since she’d received a soul, the lines of codes that had spawned her had changed . Becoming ever twisting and adapting pathways that made no logical sense. Simply looking at them as she rambled about the ability to taste sweetness had given him and his aides a headache that lasted for hours. Not to mention, the sensation that they’d peeked at something that should never been seen lasted for days afterwards.
But… If it meant saving his daughter? He would gaze into the abyss itself if he had–
His laboratory was open.
Pushing his locomotorized chair forwards, he burst into the room, panic and horror gripping his heart, “Penny!’
It was empty. Her pod was empty!
His eyes looked around in a mad panic, where was his daughter!?
The lab was a mess. Even more of one than it had become over the last three days. Equipment was scattered all over the floor. Screws, wires, irreplaceable components, Penny’s synthetic skin–
It was like a tornado had gone through the room, ruining it.
A setup. They’d all been played for fools. This was– someone had stolen–!
“Father?” Pietro’s finger froze in the air, millimetres away from the emergency panic button he’d built into his chair, meant to call Ace-Ops to his position and send an alarm to Ironwood’s personal scroll.
“P-Penny?” He asked aloud, turning his chair around. She– had she woken up?
“Father?” The same voice. Penny’s voice. But something was wrong with it. It was scratchy, indistinct, quiet. Like a damaged recording…
Pietro glanced back at the button. If someone had stolen her– could this be a trap? Something to lure him out? He closed his eyes, “Father? A-are you there?”
His finger moved from the panic button and engaged his chair’s throttle. All four legs propelling him down the hall, “Penny?” Down the path he’d walked, “Are you there?” Towards Penny’s voice… Towards the sound of running water.
It took him to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The door was open, but the room itself was plunged in complete darkness, with only a thread of light streaming through the entryway. Straining his eyes to see inside, Petro caught sight of a puddle of water. Slowly crossing the threshold between darkness and light as it grew.
He could see… something beyond it. An indistinct and deformed shape that– “Penny?” –twitched as he called out his daughter’s name. A staticky gasp came from deeper in, and turning the flashlight he kept in his chair’s storage compartment for that very purpose, for the barest moment, he saw it.
A skeletal hand, clutching the edge of the sink, fingers dug into it so deeply that the porcelain had cracked. It vanished as soon as he laid eyes on it, retreating into the darkness as if burned by the light.
“Penny?” He asked again. The sound of his voice seemingly causing a pulse of dim emerald light to light the room, outlining a shape he knew far too well. He wanted to ask so many things, to hold her in his arms, but she stood rooted in place, “Penny? Is something wrong?” Eventually he settled on simply speaking. On doing what any father with a hurting daughter, or son, should do.
“Father…” Even this close he voice sounded quiet. Hoarse like– like that of a child that had screamed or cried enough to hurt themselves –he suddenly realised as another pulse of light outlined his daughter’s macabre appearance, “Father…” She repeated, the sound of a foot stumbling forwards following her question.
“Yes, Penny?” To hear her like that tore at his heart. But–
“Am I…” Her left foot entered the light, and only now did her green eyes come alive. Their inner lights flickering on… But there was something wrong, it was almost as if something was covering half of her right eye. Something that moved and flapped in the air as she took another step forwards.
“Am I human?” Penny Polendia. Pietro Polendia’s daughter, his creation asked. Droplets of water dripping from the wire hanging from her mechanical frame, like veins weeping with blood. All the while she stared at her father, her creator, from behind the skin of her half torn visage.
-[||]-
The clicks and whirs of precision engineered motors and pistons working together filled the room. A mechanical symphony backed up by the barely audible hum of the fluorescent lights that bathed the space in cold, clinical light. Quietly, a computer’s fan kicked on as its CPU began to run hot, adding another instrument to this odd orchestra.
A shame that the sigh that left my damaged throat disrupted the ensemble with static and unnatural warble, “Is… something wrong, Penny? You’ve–” My F- …Pietro Polendia asked. I turned my head and attention towards the man, and caught him glancing my way for a moment… A particularly short one. Not a second after our eyes met, he looked away with a mixture of guilt and shame etched on his brow, “–I’m sorry,” He whispered, worry and relief mixing in his voice, “...I didn’t– I was–”
“Do not worry,” I said softly– well, as softly as a voice that sounded like a badly tuned vocaloid passed through several corruption filters, could allow me to be, “I’m fine… Father.”
Using that word for this man felt both alien to me, but also as natural as–. He was Penny’s father. I was Penny, ergo, he was my father. But I wasn’t just Penny. Yes, I occupied her body and her mind, her memories, her soul were mine. But I also held other things, another mind, another memory, another soul and–
‘ WhO AM i?! ’
–This was a question best left alone for now. He yearned for his daughter, therefore I would be her. I would be Penny… At least for now.
My focus hadn’t shifted away from my father. Who, understandably, seemed unconvinced, “I do not dislike my current situation,” I clarified while slowly lowering the hand I’d been examining into my lap. Or rather, the collection of metallic bones that vaguely resembled a human pelvis I identified as my lap, “I was… admiring myself.”
“Admiring yourself?” Out of everything I’d tried so far, this caught my father’s worried interest long enough for him to stop glancing at the screen slowly filling with the information the diagnostic program running in the back of my skull was extracting from my systems.
“Yes,” I said with a small nod that made the cable plugged into the access port at the back of my neck thump against the cradle I was currently in. For over half an hour, I’d tried to get him to engage with me to no avail, “I’ve looked at my schematics dozens of time,” As I spoke, I pull my other hand off of the armrest and splayed my fingers out, “At first, it was became I wanted to know myself as best I could so I could become a better daughter,” Looking at him through the gap between my mechanical index and thumb, Pietro’s face went through a few emotions, “But honestly? I just find them fascinating .” By the time I was done, he’d settled on one I couldn't quite place. A tired sadness of sorts?
“Oh, Penny,” His voice came out whisper-thin as he sighed, “You’re already the best daughter I could have. You don’t need to…” Rather than finish that thought, he took off his glasses and rubbed at his weary eyes.
“I am very glad to hear that,” I quickly told him before the conversation could die– and it wasn’t even a lie. The Penny parts of me were truly elated to hear that… Even if that was the 786th time they’d heard some variation of this very praise, “Still, even with all of my study of the diagrams and equations that allow me to exist. Knowing and experiencing something are completely different things.” With deliberate slowness, I carefully worked my hand into a fist.
And God was it beautiful .
A movement so simple and mindless for someone made of flesh and bones revealed how complex it truly was in that instant. Pistons made from dust-forged metal, their existence first conceived by the genius mind of my father, then precision cut by an engineer’s aura-empowered tools and assembled by the most talented craftsmen of the Atleasian military, closed.
Have you ever watched a 90s anime where machines featured prominently? Mechas are the ones that come to mind immediately, but even other genres loved to indulge in the decadence that were those Sakuga sequences. There was a style, a method, to how they would pluck the absurd, the outlandish– and at times, even the grotesque –from the minds of the creatives and into the reality depicted on the screen. By showing you the minutia, the gratuitously unnecessary intricacies of the inner workings of the fantastic, they made it feel so much more real. It made you feel like a mechanical giant piloted by a flamboyant cyborg man, and made from a robotic lion, two drilling machines, a train and a stealth bomber, could be real.
Well, that was me. My very existence was that sequence, and to a mecha nerd like me? I can’t tell you how incredible it was. My tolerances were in the picometres for goodness’ sake!
I couldn’t tell you for how long I just sat there, transfixed by magnetic rails, pistons and other hydraulics working seamlessly. But eventually, I remembered myself when I caught sight of my father, an amused look on his face, while twisting my wrist around.
“I’m only just grasping what went into my creation.” I quickly said with an embarrassed cough.
Pietro tried to say something in response. But just as he opened his mouth, the sound of the workshop’s door doing the same cut him off. Poor calibration (and my nerves) sent my system into overdrive. Time slowed by a quarter as a man wearing a heavy Atlesian military coat entered the room.
I immediately began picking out tiny details. Such as the fact that the white greatcoat was slick with moisture. Just enough that it indicated that it had either went through a light drizzle, or a snow fall. The presence of leftover snow, and the raging blizzard outside, indicated that the second possibility was the correct one.
“Pietro, is–” The six different insignias on his breast were quickly fed into my data bank, and returned one singular match. One confirmed by General James Ironwood’s voiceprint as he spoke between two uneven breaths. A minute adjustment of my optics, and I saw that his normally impeccable hair was a mess, with some of his black locks dangling in front of his eyes as they dripped with water.
Conclusion: Uncle Ironwood had just ran here through the blizzard because he couldn’t wait for a break in the storm that would allow his personal craft to fly here. It was the sort of man he was after all– Even if his action after ‘The Fall’ seemed to indicate otherwise.
“–Penny awake?” Closing my eyes, I pushed away both the overclock and the thoughts of the man I knew so well turning out like that . Instead, I took a deep breath– can’tfeelthroatcan’tfeellungs –and gave him a small wave while I hid a wince at the sudden unpleasant flare.
“Hello General,” I tried as casually as I could. But for some reason, when I reopened my eyes, he was looking at me with narrowed eyes that almost caused me to flinch away. Had I not managed to suppress my wince as well as I thought?
…Had I even? I– so much of me was missing. So many sensors that would give me spacial awareness, that’d inform me of where my arm was compared to my leg, others that would let me know what sort of material I was sitting on. I was in a void, one where the only things I could experience were sight and sounds.
Was that why my father never could look at me for long? I was still overwhelmed by it all, and I’d winced whenever my mind brushed against the parts of me that were missing. If…
“Penny,” Uncle said softly, pulling me out of my spiral, “I’m glad to see you’re o– with us again.” I latched onto that kind tone. Letting it, and the stoic, stoney face it had come from anchor me in the here, in the now.
I just nodded without saying anything.
I was fine.
I was with my father. The man that created me by siphoning part of his very life away so he could have his own daughter. The man that would happily talk for hours on end about the specifics of his works to his ever curious child. The man that would spend days researching a subject just so he could answer an innocently asked question.
My uncle was here. The man that would always treat me as a soldier… But only when the situation warranted it. The man that would slip me sweets at a moment’s notice when my father was not here to tell him not to. The man that was nearly unable to say no to allowing me access to my game console, or some DVDs…
Men whose affection for me was genuine. Who were my family in this world, who cared for me, who– “Penny, is everything okay?” The General that ruined Mantle– No! That’s not who he is! –asked with a frown.
“I am fine.” I told him, far, far too quickly. Far too inhumanly. Far too robotically.
His frown did not deepen, but for all it remained exactly as it was, it may as well have.
Pulling a chair, he slowly sat down beside me. From his position, he could see both my father and his workstation. His eyes lingered on my form for a moment, before sliding towards the words scrolling across Pietro’s computer screen. I tried to calm myself, to slowly rein in my turbulent thoughts– but the program feeding them information, the diagnostic still futilely trying to translate the irregularities of my soul into readable data made it impossible. Mindlessly trawling my mind for answers as it was, each time I could feel myself calm down, like a poorly tuned leaf blower, it would scatter my thoughts to the four winds.
“Penny,” At the end of a silent, unspoken conversation I was not privy to, Ironwood quietly spoke to me, “You don’t look, or sound okay.”
I winced– and there was no denying that I’d never managed to suppress them before, not when the General’s frown deepened as it did, “Penny, what happened?” My father asked with the rawest amount of concern I’d heard from him since I awoke as myself. Rawer even than the time Penny had melted parts of her legs by pushing herself far too hard during her first flight.
“I–,” Gripped both of the armrests, desperately trying not to fall down another spiral, “No. I– I am fine, I–” The words died in my mouth. I wasn’t fine! I hadn’t been fine!
I was only pretending to be! Ever since I woke up in that damn pod, there hadn’t been a single moment where I was okay! I– I tried to stop. This wasn’t good. I could feel myself slipping, my uncle and father’s worried expression only making things worse as it tore apart the defences I’d erected around myself thanks to a little voice saying ‘It’s fine. They can help. I don’t have to try and be strong…’.
Except it WASN’T A QUESTION OF STRENGTH! Itwas– itwas– itwas.
I tried to swallow. Something tiny, innocuous even. Something anyone does dozens, maybe hundreds of times without thinking about it each day. But my mouth… It was dry, dry like the Vaccuan desert. Too dry for me to speak properly. So saliva pooled at the back, until it became so unbearably unpleasant that I reflexively tried to swallow to get rid of it.
The moment it did, I knew I was fucked. I tried to focus on something, ANYTHING else. To put it at the back of my mind in a way that I wouldn’t hyperfocus on it. But the more I tried not to think about it, the more I did.
I felt it, in excruciating detail, slide down my throat and… vanish. Gone like it had never even existed once it slipped past the reach of the last dregs of my sensory suite–
I’mtrapedwhyamItrapedwhyamIinatube–
Whoscallingforhelpitshouldbemebutitsnotmethatsnotmyvoicewhyisitmyvoice–
IcantbreatheIcantfeelwhycantIfeelanything–
“Penny–!” –ImwashingmyfacewhywountitgoawaywhyisitstilltherewhyismyfacenotmyownwhyisitnotgoingawaywhyisthefakefacetearingapartwhenIwashitoff– “PENNY!”
The shout rips me out of the panic attack– But only for a time. Even as I registered Pietro and Ironwood’s horrified expressions, I could feel the naked panic on their faces stoke the fires of the one gripping my heart.
“Penny.” The General enunciates my name with careful precision, “Focus on my voice, please –” But his plea falls on deaf ears. I hear him, but the words fall away as I stare at his hand, straining to hold my own in place– the scraps of skin-coloured materia stuck between my twitching fingers triggering another spiral.
Before it can happen, I do something truly stupid.
Pretending that I was fine had worked. It had taken being forced to face the face I was not to break that illusion. With that in mind… What if I pretended harder? What if rather than pretend I was not bothered by this entire situation… I made it so that it couldn’t bother me?
Screwing my eyes shut, I simply… shut everything down.
If one’s body is a temple, then mine had been a ruin floating in a void. Bits and pieces of what it had once been, what it should be, floating aimlessly in the void. But with this act, it was gone. There was no temple anymore. There wasn’t even a memory of a temple, not a single thought that could ever remotely inform me as to what a ‘temple’ was, or what it should be shaped like.
There was only a formless ‘me’, floating in an empty, endless void. Now for part two of my utterly idiotic plan.
While the only thing left of myself was the ‘me’. There was another thing in the void: the diagnostic program. This thin thread was the only connection between me and the outside. One that was rapidly fraying away now that most of what it had been observing was simply gone .
Taking hold of it, I rapidly pushed myself through it and entered a new place. Another void devoid of anything that could allow me to remake the temple of myself. But filled with thousands of other things, one of which would allow me to ‘speak’ with the outside…
+I function.+ In other words. I turned off every single one of my sensors and non-critical functions, piggy-backed off of my father’s program and opened the wordpad app of the computer running it so I could talk to both of the men in the room.
+Penny what is this?+
Rather than answer my father’s question directly, I quickly format his words so that they are on the other side of the screen. At the same time I do this, I not only take the few milliseconds necessary to rename the window ‘Penny Chat, Do Not Close’. But also ‘speak’ to them, +They are missing.+
+Penny?+
+The feeling of air against my skin. Of the coolant flowing through me as the central pump acts like a heart, and it my blood. I don’t feel hot, I don’t feel cold, I don’t feel the chair under me, I don’t feel even feel my fingers as I close them.+ There’s so much more I could ‘say’. But I stop nonetheless. A longer rant would help none of us at this stage.
+Oh god, Penny I’m so sorry.+
+Don’t be, father,+ Even in this nearly emotionless state, his concern is… touching. Rather illogical, as he had no reason to expect this to happen. But Touching regardless, +You did what you thought was the best to repair me. But it was too much. I couldn’t handle it, I+
+I’m sorry for setting you off Penny, I should have known better.+
Before I could finish my attempt at reassuring my creator, I was cut off– Almost certainly for the best. My current situation would have almost certainly resulted in disaster. Still, while there is only one person this could be, it is safer to ask, +General?+
+It’s James, yes. Penny, could you tell us what happened? You were panicking and just went… slack.+
If I’d still had a voice box, I would have hummed. But as a disembodied program, all I could do was remain quiet. How much did I say? Penny… Didn’t know his semblance, didn’t know how terribly he’d be twisted by it. How it would make him unable to bend and adapt, until he finally broke, Mantle and Atlas with him.
+I… copied you,+ But I knew I had to do something. And so, I spoke, +Your semblance, that is.+
+My semblance?+
+Yes.+ I answered with a single word and waited. Not long, just enough for a pregnant pause to form, +Perhaps an explanation is in order.+
And so I did. First, I talked about his semblance. How I'd copied its ability to hyperfocus on a single thing and how it had led me down this very specific path regarding ‘calming’ myself down. To be perfectly honest, the parallels hadn't hit me until he'd asked me what I'd done. I was dubious of if being faced with a possible end result of his semblance would change anything– humans were so very prone to thinking things such as ‘it might have happened to them , but it won't happen to me !’ –but this was my way of putting my thumb on the scale as it were.
Afterwards, I went into more details of what exactly I'd done to myself.
+Since when are you able to do such things?+
Needless to say, they were confused by my ability to do even half of what I'd done. The original Penny certainly hadn't been able to, or she'd have told them. The explanation was… messy to say the least. People of flesh and bone, bound to the temple of their being lacked a certain context to be able to understand.
But in the end, I'd managed to get something of a half-decent explanation to them. I think. Simply put, I'd told them that at my core, I was a self-learning algorithm with hundreds of things bolted on top of it. And that due to ‘recent events’ and existence as something with a ‘ soul’ I had essentially gone through both a rapid evolution of my algorithm, and that the massively bloated mess that was my operating system had consolidated and streamlined the various disparate programs that allowed me to exist.
I couldn't see their faces, but I could only guess that ‘recent events’ meant something entirely different to them.
+I see. That's +
Before it even began, Ironwood’s next message abruptly stopped. Without eyes to see what was happening, I could only imagine what was happening outside of the digital realm. Perhaps my father was wrestling for control of the keyboard so he could speak to me? Or maybe my uncle was trying, and most likely failing considering how long he was staying silent, to find words of reassurance?
+James had to go.+
Just as I started to worry as to why they were being quiet, my father began talking to me once again.
+A patrol found someone lost in the blizzard, right on Mantle's figurative doorstep and getting attacked by Grimms.+
I… was not expecting the sudden surge of anger and disgust that rushed through me at the mention of the enemies of humanity. The feeling was so visceral and instant that, for a moment, I genuinely thought they had programmed Penny with an instinctive hatred that rivalled the Grimms’ own. But thankfully, no.
This was all me. An opinion that Penny had developed herself after months of serving in the Atlas military. Although… beyond these feelings were others. Shame, anger at myself, and a sensation of loss that melded together into self-deprecation so caustic I had to wonder where it came from. Surely, it couldn't come solely from Penny feeling helpless at being unable to go out and help that person.
Right?
+I hope they will be fine.+ There were few things worse than death-by-Grimm in this world.
+I'm sure they will be Penny, and so will you.+
I… didn’t believe that for a second. Not that they wouldn’t be okay. But that I would be.
After that, the discussion slowly came to a crawl. And though he stubbornly refused to at first, I eventually managed to brownbeat my father into going to bed. Reactivating my voice to point out that lack of sleep on his part would just mean that the repairs would take longer was what did the trick.
Reluctant as he was, he eventually left me alone. But not before he quickly wrote a program that would connect me to his scroll and would alert him if anything went wrong…
Unsurprisingly, when I risked reactivating my optics, he’d tucked his chair in a corner of the lab and promptly went to sleep there. All I could do before enclosing myself into the digital world once again, was roll my eyes in exasperation. Of course that was what he’d do.
-[||]-
My next day ended… noticeably better than the first.
By such a wide margin it was frankly insulting to even compare the two. I had hands that could feel, lungs that could brea– okay so I didn’t actually have those. Which, if I’m honest, must have been really confusing for both my father and uncle last night.
It was still unpleasant to be unable to breathe. But… it was bearable, for the most part? Not fine, but it wasn’t the all consuming wrongness it had been last night. More of an itch you can’t quite reach, the sort that fades into the background until you brush against it just so and suddenly you’re hyper aware of it once again.
As for how this change came about? There were two reasons. First, and probably most important, I had the majority of my body back. For the last fifteen or so hours, my father and his aides had slowly rebuilt me one piece, one component at a time. And if I were to be honest, I’m not quite sure there’s any analogy, comparison or explanation that can do justice to how it felt.
But if I had to try… The temple that I inhabited was slowly being rebuilt brick by brick, and with each one, I became able to feel, see, taste and smell the world around me more and more? But in a slow and gradual way that wasn’t an overwhelming rush of stimuli.
…And… yeah, I have nothing better.
At this point, I was only missing the lower parts of my body. Anything above my hips was back in place and coated with the synthetic skin that Penny had worn. It was a sort of weird ballistic gel-silicon hybrid that felt almost exactly like skin, and could absorb shock fairly well. Unfortunately, it had to cure for an entire day before it was ‘safe’ to move around with. Until then, the gel that was under the top layer was a sort of particularly gloopy and disgusting goo.
And… Gods my arm itched …
Where was I?
Ah, right. My physical state. My lower body wasn’t completely untouched. Plenty of parts had been installed, adding some ‘meat’ to the metal skeleton of my legs. But I could still see my ‘bones’ and they had yet to slot in my verniers where they belonged. Pietro wasn’t too keen to let me have access to my flight capabilities until I was fully cleared. Other than that, I also have a good dozen or so cables and tubes snaking up my hips and into my chest cavity.
Now, that I should have been freaked out by. But no, I was fine– okay, mostly fine.
And that was thanks to the second reason.
Sitting in the digital world, alone with no one but me, myself and the computer’s programs running in the background, there was plenty of time for me to… ‘Figure myself out’ you could say. Especially when I started to think at the same speed as a computer.
To keep things as concise as I can, I replayed the short few hours I’d been active on loop. Between each loop, I either replayed Penny’s memories, or those of my human side. Needless to say, the scale of my existence was heavily tipped towards the human.
Penny, bless her soul, hadn’t been active for particularly long. A bit over half a year, eight-nine months depending on how you looked at things. She’d been turned on for the first time nine months ago– her body that is. The ‘memory’ of the event was still in the body’s data banks, it was nothing more than a test run to see if everything worked properly. Which it did, afterwards they ran more tests. Last thing they wanted was for Penny to be the mechanical equivalent of a stillborn after all.
Penny as a person was ‘born’ a month later, when Pietro infused her with his aura. Which might not actually be his semblance like my human side thought? Penny had never thought to ask, and it had required advance machinery to kickstart her aura generator into giving her a soul–
Point is , compared to that. My human side was far older.
Thanks to that, I thought that the answer to ‘who am I?’ was a simple one. I was the human, but wearing Penny as a skinsuit. Except… except the idea felt wrong.
It didn’t just feel wrong on a personal level, but also wrong on a factual one for some reason. So, I dug deeper. I don’t… I don’t remember what caused the realisation to dawn on me but: “Thou Art I, and I art Thou”.
A silly phrase from equally as silly games. Somehow, the Persona series allowed me to figure out just who I was. Penny and the human? Both were intrinsic parts of myself. I wasn’t one more than I was the other. It wasn’t a question of balance. But of ‘masks’.
When faced with Ironwood and Pietro, I’d worn the mask of Penny. One that even now fit comfortably over my everything thoughts, making them look and sound the part. But when I was alone, I wore the mask of the human. Someone trying to understand what had happened and use what few nuggets of knowledge he’d possessed to try and make this world a better place.
It wasn’t perfect , nothing created in twenty four hours of subjective time while completely isolated and nothing to look at than the abstract representation of the digital space within a computer, could be. But it was enough , it was a foundation that I could expand on as I understood more of myself.
As a side note that I can’t find any place to fit in, despite how important it might eventually be, since my system currently considers me as P.E.N.N.Y 2.0. I’ve come to call the previous Penny 1.0 and the human… the human. Imaginative, I know.
In any case. As much as I appreciated the fact that I had managed some form of understanding of myself, it left me with a problem. Namely that introspection can only lead to so much. It needs to be weighed against lived experiences. Experiences that I currently lacked, and couldn’t acquire since I was stuck on a bed that, itself, was stuck in a room.
Thankfully, I had managed to convince both my father and uncle to allow me to undergo the transformation into the foulest, most wretched creature that exists upon this earth– if you ignored politicians, Jaque Gelé (I would never call him Schnee if I could help it, because fuck that man), Salem, and whoever decided to give Faunus only one animal trait. In that order.
I was now an I-Pad kid.
Now, to their credit, neither of them lacked for a sense of responsibility and had actually given me pretty strict guidelines in terms of using the scroll. Mainly that while I was allowed to use one, it was off limits during the night and I couldn’t use it for more than a few hours a day. As such, it was now sitting in a recharge station on the other side of the room..
Unfortunately for everyone involved, me more than anyone, I was a highly advanced AI inside of a military-grade gynoid body. I’d paired myself with that sucker the moment that my dad had been confident enough in my synth-skin’s ability to handle being moved around the screen to put it in my hands.
Thanks to that, I could access its functions even when I wasn’t touching it!
As for what I was using it for?
Well, originally I meant to use it for smart things. Specifically go on the tower network and explore it. Being an AI, I figured that I could most likely identify whatever vulnerability had been exploited during Beacon's fall. Given enough time at least.
With me stuck in bed like this, I then thought that I could use the wee hours of the day to get a headstart on what would undoubtedly be a particularly long endeavour. Except that the network was a lot more active than I thought. I'd barely dipped into it that I had to dodge the ‘eyes’ of half a dozen security programs.
Inexperienced as I was with the digital realm, I wisely left before I was discovered by any of them. Which brought me to the second use I'd devised for it!
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
Greetings strange person I’ve never met in my entire life!
You do not know me, and neither do I know you!
The only reason you’ve received this is because, in a bout of complete boredom, I’ve used a d10 (10 was a reroll) to assemble a scroll number.
I am bored, temporarily bedridden (I’ll get better tomorrow) and forbidden to leave my house by my father and my uncle.
Therefore, I ask of you stranger I’ve never met, nor ever will.
Would you like to be friends?
(PS: My dad and uncle would ground me forever if they knew I did this. So if you want to be my friend, we’ll have to use super secret codenames! Mine shall be… Evoluder.)
Unknown Number:
I would say it is against my better judgement to reply, but I have a literal clump of my soul who I’m 90% sure is my Will To Stand Up Straight and Hope To Be A Better Person shoving the Scroll in my hands and giving me a thumbs up, so fuck it.
Sure.
Call me Rayleigh.
Also, your alias sounds like the villain of a campy Mistrali show.
Tokusatsu? I always mess up the spelling.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
As it turns out, while messaging people did use the tower network, it did so in a way that was ‘apart’ from the core program that was being guarded. Like… imagine that the part I'd tried to peek in was a government building. Lots of guards to keep an eye on what was going on in there. By comparison, the messaging app was sort of like you were having a discussion outside of the building, probably in a café across the street of some kind.
The guards in the building could maybe catch a glimpse of what was going on there if they looked out the window. But distance, and the users’ ability to move from the terrace into the café itself, made identifying anyone and what was being said a dicey proposition.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
Pleasure to meet you Rayleigh!
And I will have you know that my name is taken from the bravest of man!
Someone that was ready to stand against evil and corruption!
He was the bravest because he didn’t hesitate to rely on others BTW.
He fought and beat all of his opponents, but the King of Braves was never alone.
And I don’t believe I’ve seen a Mistrali Tokustsu?
I am… rather sheltered. My house is large, and there are many people, most of them quite friendly!
But I only gained access to a scroll some two months ago.
Could you send me a picture of these ‘Tokusatsu’s?
Friend Rayleigh:
Uhh, give me a sec. I only ever heard about them from cultural osmosis.
Aaaand nevermind, Huldra found something by puttering around on my desktop.
Here .
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Huh . To say I was surprised that Remnant apparently had Tokusatsu shows was unexpected. The show hadn’t ever really explored the sort of media the kingdom had, and 1.0 never really bothered with broadening her horizons beyond the Altesean basics… Granted she didn’t really have the time to.
Still, while not exactly the smartest thing to do, messaging a random person I'd never met in the middle of the night was oddly nostalgic and grounding. The human had done as much hundreds of times in the past, it was no discord. But chatting away while they really ought to be in bed was… nice.
The fact that one of his interests apparently had a presence in this world? That was just the cherry on top.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
He looks quite cool!
…I can’t tell if he’s the villain or not though.
I will have to watch it to discover if he is not!
Thank you for making tomorrow more bearable friend!
Friend Rayleigh:
No problem.
Huldra seems to like you and I can’t say I disagree with that part of myself.
…God, my Semblance’s mechanics make me sound deranged sometimes.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Hearing this caught me a bit off guard. Armed with 1.0’s knowledge, I knew that people with awoken aura were not exactly rare. Uncommon? Yes, but generally speaking you could expect any one settlement to have one, maybe two, people with their aura unlocked.
For all it called to Grimms, it was just too useful not to have at least one person able to call on it. Even if just for the physical enhancements it brought.
Semblances on the other hand? Far rarer, so ending up with someone that possessed both? Their name featured on a list that was vanishingly small compared to the vast amounts of lives that called Remnant home.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
Oh, I thought they were your significant other. But it is a semblance?
This means you have aura too, yes?
I have aura too!
I would be dead if not.
But no semblance.
I wonder what mine will be.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
I hadn't planned to reveal this much. Or anything, really. But being on the Internet was… liberating.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Friend Rayleigh:
I hope yours doesn’t manifest like mine did.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Huldra, but the fact that my soul budded off an independent actor made out of my determination and optimism should tell you a lot of the sort of thing I was pushing through at the time.
It is nice having an anonymous chat like this if only to just out and out say that .
But yeah, I just hit the breaking point, refused to break and my soul reacted.
You:
That sounds…
Unpleasant.
But, well. Mine hasn’t manifested while I could see my naked skeleton.
So I hope it’ll manifest thanks to a happy event.
I do not need another panic attack.
Fuck !
ohgoditsallovermyhands
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
As Rayleigh typed a storm, I reflected on myself some. Mentioning my skeleton had been a mistake, but one that was within parameters. I'd expected that sort of thing to happen after all. Be it 1.0, or the human, neither were particularly good at not letting certain things slip. My solution? A new mask for me to wear.
The specifics of which were in the name I'd chosen for it: ‘Evoluder’. A term that belonged to Guy Shisho, protagonist of GaoGaiGar, one of the best damn Super Robot shows ever. Once a human, a terrible accident left him a powerful cyborg and using the powers this transformation had given him he then kept humanity safe from the evils of Zonder Metal as the King of Braves!
Just as Guy before, ‘Evoluder’ had found herself in a terrible accident. One she'd survived only thanks to her aura, and even then just barely. In the end, she’d necessitated a full body conversion into a cyborg. Something, in a move that proved the superiority of Altlesian science, was actually possible. On paper at least. In practice, it required the sorts of income and influence that makes even Gelé’s seem quaint.
Main reason I felt that this was a safe story to weave for myself was because I didn’t think for a second that whoever I’d randomly contacted would be able to fact check this information… Or would just chalk it up to a particularly in depth roleplay.
Still, this was great! Thanks to the mask of anonymity, I could just vent and grumble to my heart’s content! Talking about all this to my father, or the General, would have been tough. But here? It was–
The sudden feeling of something disgustingly slimy and gross oozing down my arm, and getting stuck between the fingers of my other hand ripped me out of my thoughts.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Friend Rayleigh:
Breathe in for five seconds, hold it there for five seconds, breathe out for five seconds, breathe in for five seconds.
Repeat.
That’s all I can do for you short of pulling a nonsense Semblance breakthrough out of my ass and sending Huldra through an internet connection.
…Fuck, I hope you’re still there and were able to read that.
…Please tell me you’re still there.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!
Paying only half attention to Rayleigh, I did everything I could to CALM DOWN!
Clenching my teeth, I screwed my eyes shut and counted to three, “In…” Wait noIcouldn’tbreatheshit! “Oooooooout.”
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck what do I do?!
“This is fine. I am fine. I am not bleeding out.”
…
I’m not?
“I am not.”
A digital exhale left my voicebox as I carefully reopened my eyes and took a look at my right arm.
It was a fucking mess. Half-cured synth-skin goop was absolutely everywhere. It was on my arm, on my hands, on my chest, on the chair– even on the fucking cables that went up my hips.
How the fu– Oh.
A quick review of my memory banks told me what happened. From the moment that I’d sent that first message, I’d been nervously scratching at my forearm, and since that was something that the human tended to do quite a lot, I hadn’t noticed .
Normally this would have been fine. But as mentioned before, my synth-skin’s underlayers weren’t done curing. So, when I finally wore away the cured skin, nature took its course and now I had a ton of skin-goop all over me.
Ugh. I bet that Rayleigh would laugh at my misery if I told them. They just have that sort of energ– SHIT, RAYLEIGH!
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
I AM FINE!
Sorry for being gone for ten minutes!
I have mentioned the fact I have seen my skeleton, yes?
You might have guessed that is no longer the case, I now have mechanical limbs.
They are great!
Being able to see the pistons and magnetic rails is- it makes me hot under the collar as it we
…
I tried to delete that.
I want to curl up in a ball now.
Plz ignore that
I beg you
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
In my blind rush to let my new friend I was (more or less) fine, I metaphorically tripped on my own feet while trying to figure which mask to wear for the occasion. One moment, I was 1.0, the other Evoluder, and for one critical and terrible line, I wore the human’s degenerate lust for sexy machine ladies on my fingertips.
And somehow fat fingered the send button when I realised it . How did I even do that?! The interface was entirely in my head! HOW ?!
Great, now I was gonna be treated like a disgusting weirdo!
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Friend Rayleigh:
Ignore you having impeccable taste?
(Also, yes, this is now a topic change unless you want to talk about the other stuff )
May I suggest transparent synthskin, so you can enjoy the view without any gunk getting in?
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Nnnnnnnnnevermind! My new friend was apparently exactly as much of a degenerate when it came to robots. Part of me was glad that I’d found a kindred spirit, at least in that regard. With that in mind, I did something I’d probably regret down the line.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
Maybe.
But I don’t think dad and uncle would be okay with it
For many reasons
But I am glad that you too are an enjoyer of slick, perfectly engineered, mechanical perfection~
It’s really cool.
I couldn’t stop touching myself with it.
…Wait, no that came out wrong.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
I doubled down by sending a picture of my naked arm.
I’d taken it before it was coated with synth skin, so that particular mess wasn’t going to be an issue here. But, I guess Evoluder is now a pervert that lusts after mechanical prosthetics… Between the fact that adding this to that mask, and the synth-skin incident, if I needed more proof that I’d not magically solved my every issues, this would be it.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Friend Rayleigh:
I mean, I’m not judging.
Add some brass accents to that and I wouldn’t be able to help myself either.
You:
How lewd !
But unfortunately, I do not believe they are available as such.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Impeccable tastes on Rayleigh though.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
thank you for answering a message from a complete stranger Rayleigh.
unless there is anything you wish to say, I'll leave you to have a night's sleep.
It is four in the morning after all.
Friend Rayleigh:
That it is.
I’ll tell you tomorrow about how I fought a giant robot today, maybe.
And how it broke my nose.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
I… There was a lot to unpack here. And frankly I didn’t care to? Not today at least. Especially not when I could hear my dad’s mobility chair stomping down the hall.
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
You:
Do not do that!
Either of these! Broken noses are painful, and replacement ones with senses as good as a human’s don’t exist, no matter what people trying to sell you on body conversions might tell you.
My uncle said as much an
Shit, dad’s here.
I must go, he’ll revoke my scroll privileges if he sees me texting
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------]
Quickly banging out a last few messages before my dad came in, I quickly disconnected from my scroll and prepared myself to face the music…