Her Voice
There were unfortunately too many ‘no running’ signs in the R&D lab for Rainbow to pretend that she hadn’t seen any of them, and so she merely walked briskly — very briskly, the sort of brisk walk that left the slightest hints of rainbows in the air behind her — through the pristine, gleaming corridors and into the lab.
Ciel had beaten her there, hopefully because she’d been closer by when she got the word — it wasn’t as though Rainbow had dawdled on the way or anything — and of course, Twilight, Moondancer, and Doctor Polendina.
And Penny, sitting up on the worksurface, her legs dangling down but not quite reaching the floor.
As the door slid open to admit Rainbow, Penny’s eyes turned towards her. “Hey, Rainbow Dash!” she called, in her own voice once more.
Rainbow grinned. “Good to hear your voice again, Penny,” she said, slowing down a little for her final approach.
“I’m glad to be able to hear it as well!” Penny declared. “I’m grateful for Twilight letting me talk, but it didn’t really sound like me.”
“I’m sorry, Penny,” Twilight said softly. “If I’d expected something might have happened like, well, what actually happened, then I would have—”
“Why would you have expected something like that, Twilight?” Doctor Polendina asked. “Nobody expected that Penny would be damaged in such a way.” He paused and closed his eyes for a moment. “Nobody,” he repeated. “Dash, Soleil.”
Ciel moved to stand by Rainbow’s side. “Sir?”
“I … I may owe you both an apology,” Doctor Polendina said. “In the heat of the moment, I had some very harsh words to say to the both of you, to you especially, Dash, but to both of you.”
“You weren’t yourself, Doctor,” Twilight ventured.
“You know better than that, Twilight, in every way,” Doctor Polendina said. “In the first place, you know that it is not your place to say what Dash and Soleil may or may not find offensive, and in the second place … I was in every respect myself. I was the real me. The person standing before you now, apologising, might be more accurately said to be not myself. I hope that doesn’t unduly taint the apology in your eyes.”
“You don’t owe me an apology, sir,” Rainbow replied. “Ciel, yes, if she’ll have it, but not me. As team leader, it was my responsibility to bring Penny back home safe—”
“I’m not a child!” Penny said sharply. “You don’t need to treat me like a baby.”
“I’m not,” Rainbow insisted. “I … okay, yes, I have done, and I’ll probably do it again for however much time we have left together, but this isn’t about you, Penny. This is about what it means to be a leader: the first duty of any leader, from me all the way up to the General himself, is to bring the boys and girls back home—”
“And you did,” Penny pointed out.
“Not in one piece,” Rainbow replied.
“But you did bring her back,” Doctor Polendina said. “I can’t deny that when I saw Penny, I was … well, I don’t think I need to describe what I felt — I think I made my feelings pretty clear to you — but … it’s very big of you to take responsibility like that. All’s well that…” He blinked rapidly; as he spoke, he had begun to gesture with one hand in front of his face, and now, he stared at that hand as though he had the answers for the test written on his palm. “All’s well that … all’s well that…”
“That ends well, Doctor?” Moondancer suggested.
“Yes,” Doctor Polendina said quickly. “Yes, all’s well that ends well, of course. Thank you, Moondancer.”
Moondancer didn’t reply. In fact, nobody said anything. Silence descended upon the laboratory like … like something really heavy flattening everything underneath it. Nobody knew what to say — or at least, Rainbow didn’t, and she could imagine that everyone else felt the same way. She didn’t like Doctor Polendina’s attitude to Penny, but … she could understand it, at least a little bit. This was a man who had built his own reputation and enhanced the greatness of Atlas both with the power of his mind, and now, that mind was failing him; it would be like if her limbs started to give out, and she had to spend the rest of her life — however short that ‘rest’ might be — in bed; bad enough to die, but even worse to lose the thing that made you yourself first, the thing that gave you value to Atlas and to others, the thing that made you special.
He was unlikely to want to talk about it, and so, Rainbow looked at Penny and said, “How are you feeling, Penny?”
“I’m feeling one hundred percent optimised!” Penny declared brightly.
“Glad to hear it,” Rainbow said. “Ready for the Vytal Festival?”
“I cannot wait!” Penny cried. Her voice dropped as she added, “Although, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to live up to the expectations that you and General Ironwood have of me, Father.”
“What makes you say that, Penny?” Doctor Polendina asked.
“It is because of what happened underneath Mountain Glenn, isn’t it?” Ciel suggested.
Penny nodded. “I needed you to protect me, and in the end, it was Rainbow who took out Mercury and Lightning Dust, not me. Maybe you should enter the one on one round instead of me?”
“Don’t tempt me, Penny,” Rainbow said, with a touch of laughter in her voice. She caught Ciel looking at her, and so she added. “I’m joking! I was obviously joking; why do you have to look at me like that?”
“Perhaps because I believe you might actually do it,” Ciel murmured.
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m not going to deny that I want to do it, but that isn’t the same thing as saying that I’m actually going to do it. I know why I’m here, I know why we’re all here, and I know that this is Penny’s moment.”
“Why?” Penny asked.
Rainbow frowned slightly. “Why what?”
“Why is it my moment?” Penny asked. “Why can’t it be your moment, to impress General Ironwood or show what a faunus is capable of?”
“Because we’re all here for you, Penny,” Twilight said. “This team, everything, it’s for your benefit.”
“For my benefit?” Penny replied. “Or for Atlas’ benefit?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rainbow said. “Not for this. For this, the only thing that matters is whether or not you want this. Do you want to go to the one on one rounds, do you want to stand there in the coliseum, with the crowd watching and all the folks on TV, do you want them cheering out your name, is that what you want?”
Penny looked into Rainbow’s eyes. “It is, but—”
“Then you’ll get your chance,” Rainbow said. “I guarantee it. It’s that simple.”
“But you want that too,” Penny pointed out.
“Yeah, but I’m the team leader, and that means making sacrifices,” Rainbow said. She walked closer towards her. “As the team leader, my job is to help you out. Not because of who you are or how important you are, but because you’re on my team. Okay?”
Penny hesitated for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “But all the same … after what happened, what makes anyone think that I’ll be any good at the tournament?”
“Well, I can try and help you out with that too,” Rainbow said.
“The entire resources of the Academy and Atlas are at your disposal, Penny,” Doctor Polendina said. “Whatever you need. Everyone wants to see you do well in this tournament.”
Penny’s eyes glanced downwards. “I understand, Father,” she murmured. “Thank you, Rainbow Dash.”
“Penny,” Doctor Polendina murmured. He let out a kind of groaning sigh. “I know that you heard … I know that I said … I know that I’m putting a lot of… gods’ sake what’s the word, crushing force—”
“Pressure?” Twilight suggested.
“Yes, pressure, I know that I’m putting a lot of pressure on you, but that’s only because I want to see you become the best that you can be, because I know,” Doctor Polendina placed a hand on Penny’s shoulders, “that you have the makings of greatness in you, Penny, and I just want the rest of the world to see that as I do.”
“And you know that if you don’t make it all the way to the finals, Pyrrha will be very disappointed,” Twilight said.
“Pyrrha?” Doctor Polendina asked. “Pyrrha Nikos?”
“That’s right,” Penny said. “I met her at Beacon, and now, she’s one of my best friends.”
A smile played across Doctor Polendina’s face. “Is that so?”
Penny nodded. “She and Ruby were the first two people I met in Vale when I … when I ran away,” she said, her voice dropping.
“Why don’t you tell your father about what’s happened to you since you’ve been at Beacon?” Ciel suggested. “I’m sure that he’d like to know.”
“Yes,” Doctor Polendina said. “Yes, I would.” He stepped back, away from Penny, and sat down in a chair that Twilight pulled over for him with her telekinesis. “I’d like that very much.”
Penny hesitated. “Where should I start?”
“Start at the beginning,” Ciel said. “That’s usually the ideal place to begin.”
Penny chuckled softly. “Okay,” she said. “So … it all started after I ran away. I’m sorry, Father, but I—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Doctor Polendina said softly.
“'Doesn’t matter'?” Penny asked, sounding incredulous at the fact that her father might not want to discuss — or rebuke — her running away. “Are you sure? Do you mean it?”
“Now is not the moment to discuss it,” Doctor Polendina insisted. “Please, Penny, go on.”
Is that just because he doesn’t want to have the argument, and if he let Penny explain why she ran off, then he’d have to get into her reasoning with her? Rainbow wondered.
Penny hesitated for a moment, but then said, “Okay then. I ran away, I bought a ticket to Vale online — you should probably use something other than my name as your password, Father.”
“You shouldn’t say passwords out loud, Penny,” remonstrated Ciel.
“Is that really the issue here?” Rainbow asked her.
“Doctor, your password is ‘Penny’?!” Twilight gasped.
“I know, I know,” Doctor Polendina groaned. “I have … lately, I’ve had … trouble remembering more complex passwords.”
“Even so,” Ciel murmured.
“I could come up with a password for you and remember it?” Moondancer suggested.
“So that I need you to be here every time I want to access my own computers?” Doctor Polendina demanded.
“It might be better than you having a password that … well, that Rainbow could guess,” Twilight said. “No offence; it’s just that—”
“I’m not a computer person,” Rainbow said. “Don’t worry, Twi, I get the point.”
“That’s something that we can discuss later,” Doctor Polendina said irritably. “For now, Penny, go on.”
“I got my ticket, and I got on the airship to Vale,” Penny said. “I thought I was safe; the skyliner wasn’t stopped on the way, although obviously the rest of my team had followed me. But I made it to Vale, and I thought that I was … free.” Penny paused for a moment. “Then I realised that I didn’t know what to do in Vale. I was just there. I didn’t know anybody or have anywhere to go, and although I don’t require sleep or food, I would have liked something to stop me from getting bored. So I started wandering around the city, looking for something, anything, that caught my interest. That’s when I ran into Ruby and Pyrrha. Or, rather, that’s when Ruby and Pyrrha ran into me. Literally. Ruby was moving at super speed, and she didn’t see me as she stepped into the street.”
Doctor Polendina chuckled. “She has a speed semblance, this Ruby Rose?”
“Semblance: Petal Burst,” Ciel announced. “It allows Ruby to move at superhuman speeds, leaving rose petals behind her in a way which might be thought to be similar to Rainbow Dash’s rainbow.”
“'Might be'?” Rainbow asked.
“I believe Ruby’s semblance will evolve to be more than that,” Ciel said. “She does not merely give the impression of rose petals, as you give the impression of a rainbow; she actually creates rose petals. I believe that that act of creation, or transfiguration, gives a clue as to the likely direction of her semblance evolution.”
“Fascinating,” Doctor Polendina said. “I mean that genuinely, but for now, could we—?”
“Of course,” Ciel said. “My apologies, Doctor, Penny.”
“It’s fine,” Penny assured her. “So, Ruby and Pyrrha crashed into me, but they were both very sweet about it afterwards and wanted to make sure that I was okay, and when they found out that I was all alone and didn’t know my way around Vale, they both agreed to help me out. They were even willing to fight Rainbow Dash to keep her away from me.”
“Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary,” Rainbow said.
“Do you think you could have taken them?” Twilight asked, a touch of mischief entering her voice.
Rainbow laughed. “Ruby? Yes, I could definitely take her,” she said. “Pyrrha … I’m not so sure. I’d kind of like to find out some day, but … it was for the best that we didn’t find out then.”
“They were willing to fight?” Doctor Polendina asked. “For someone they didn’t know, a stranger?”
“They’re both so kind,” Penny said. “So warm and caring.”
“They’re what people call true huntresses,” Rainbow said. “The kind who do the right thing without thinking about it.”
She left unsaid that she had some issues with the idea of the true huntress as represented by Ruby, and to a lesser extent by Pyrrha; this wasn’t the time to get into it.
“And even when they found out what I was, they accepted me without having to think about it!” Penny cried.
Doctor Polendina’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” he said. “You told them?”
“General Ironwood gave his approval,” Ciel informed him.
“Did he?” Doctor Polendina murmured. “Well, they can’t be untold, I suppose. And they accepted it? They accepted you?”
Penny nodded eagerly. “They didn’t care, and neither did Jaune or Sunset. They’re Ruby and Pyrrha’s teammates. Jaune is Pyrrha’s boyfriend, and he seems like a pretty nice guy; he isn’t a great fighter like Ruby or Pyrrha or Sunset, and I think that bothers him sometimes, and I can understand why, but none of them seem to mind, and he has a really useful semblance that lets him help the others when they’re in trouble. Sunset … Sunset isn’t a true huntress like Pyrrha or Ruby, but she takes care of everyone else, and she always knows what to say to make people feel better, no matter what. But yes, I told Ruby, and I told Pyrrha, and then I told the others, and none of them minded. None of them treated me any differently than they had done before. I was so worried about what would happen when people found out, but … it was like I told them … I don’t know what it was like; it was like something that didn’t matter at all, like … if I told them I was left-handed. That’s how little difference it made. They didn’t care. They don’t care. They just … they accept me as I am.”
Doctor Polendina leaned forwards. “So … you were happy there, then?”
“I was,” Penny said. “I really was.”
Doctor Polendina nodded absently. He sat back, straightening up. “Tell me more, please,” he said. “I want … I want to know everything.”
So Penny told him everything; well, almost everything. She didn’t tell him about Salem or the relics or any of the classified information shared with them by the General and Professor Ozpin. She did, however, include accounts of their misadventures before the mission to Mountain Glenn; there were times when Rainbow scarcely knew where to hide her face.
“—and that’s when Rainbow came storming back out of Professor Ozpin’s office to tell us that we were going to hunt down Blake!” Penny declared.
Rainbow groaned.
Doctor Polendina looked at her. “It seems as though you were enjoying being out from under the eye of authority a little too much by then, Dash.”
Rainbow groaned again. “I’m not proud of what I did, sir,” she murmured.
“It worked out in the end,” Penny pointed out.
“That does not change the wrongheadedness of it,” Ciel muttered.
“Or make it any less embarrassing,” Rainbow added.
Penny passed on from that soon enough, thankfully, and returned to more everyday matters; despite what Rainbow had said to Cadance before coming over here, there had been a lot of time at Beacon in which no one had been trying to kill them, and in which the threat of the White Fang had seemed as distant as it was in Atlas. It was on those moments that Penny spent most of her time, dwelling upon everyday things, the school life that seemed so commonplace to Rainbow and the others but which had been new to her — and of course, upon time spent with friends.
By the time that she reached the end, or by the time that Doctor Polendina stopped her before she could describe the mission to Mountain Glenn with which he was already well-acquainted, the doctor had a soft smile fixed upon his face.
“I’m glad,” he said. “Yes, I am, I’m very glad. I’m glad that you … that they … I’m glad. You’ll have those memories to treasure, for the rest of your life.”
“Yes, Father,” Penny murmured.
Doctor Polendina nodded slowly. “I’m glad,” he repeated. He got up from his chair and patted Penny on the top of her head. “It has never been my intent to see you unhappy,” he said, “only to see that you fulfil your potential.”
“I understand,” Penny said, in a voice barely louder than a whisper.
For a moment, Rainbow thought that Doctor Polendina might say something else, but he let out a sort of wince of pain and pinched his brow with one hand.
“Doctor?” Twilight asked. “Doctor, are you okay?”
“No,” Doctor Polendina said bluntly. “No, I am not. But I just need … I need to rest for now. I am … I’m very tired. At least it wasn’t as though I was planning to get any more work done today anyway.” He managed to force a smile — and it was forced; Rainbow could see the effort he was making — as he said, “So, Twilight, Moondancer, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Penny, you should go back to the Academy for now, with Dash and Soleil. I’ll let you know if I need anything more from you.”
“Yes, Father,” Penny said softly as she got up off the workbench.
“Do you need me to call you a cab, Doctor?” Moondancer asked.
Doctor Polendina hesitated for a moment. “A cab? A cab? Yes, yes, that would be very kind of you, Moondancer. Very kind indeed.”
Moondancer lingered, and so did Twilight too, in the lab with Doctor Polendina as Rainbow and Ciel fell in on either side of Penny and, together, left the lab, the door sliding open to let them exit into the corridor beyond.
“Ciel,” Rainbow murmured, “would you mind giving Penny and I a minute?”
Ciel glanced from Rainbow to Penny. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” she admitted.
“Please?” Rainbow said.
Ciel was silent for a moment, and then for a moment more, and Rainbow was afraid that she would downright refuse to give them any space, but after a few moments had passed, she said, “Very well. I will take the stairs and see you at the bottom. Penny.”
“See you in a little bit,” Penny said, as Ciel went the opposite direction to them — heading for the stairs instead of the elevator. To Rainbow, Penny said, “I thought you said I should be nicer to her?”
“You should,” Rainbow told her. “But I’m not asking her for a minute to be rude but because … because Ciel wouldn’t agree with what I’m about to tell you.”
Penny blinked. “Why not?”
“Because … because Ciel is doing what she thinks is best for you, just like me,” Rainbow said. “We just disagree a little bit on what that is.”
They reached the elevator, and Rainbow waited for the lift to arrive — and for her and Penny to step into it — before she said anything else. As the lift began to move downwards towards the ground — or the surface level of Atlas, at least — Rainbow leaned against the elevator wall with her arms folded across her chest.
“I know that didn’t go the way you hoped it would,” she said.
Penny didn’t meet Rainbow’s eyes. “I heard what he said earlier, but … he was being so much nicer today, I thought that maybe he’d let me explain myself, that I want—”
“So much more than we’ve got planned,” Rainbow finished for her. She smiled thinly. “I should have paid more attention when you said that the first time. I’m sorry, Penny, for not listening, for not wondering … for taking so long to think about what you wanted.”
“It’s okay,” Penny murmured.
“No,” Rainbow said, “it isn’t. I … I thought that…”
I thought that of course you’d want to be a part of Atlas, just like of course only truly evil people would want to join the White Fang. Seems like I was wrong about both of those.
“It doesn’t matter what I thought. What matters is … well, there are two things that matter. The first is that you shouldn’t hold it against your father, no matter how frustrated he makes you.”
“Why not?” Penny asked. “You heard what he said; he thinks that I’m—”
“He’s still your father,” Rainbow insisted. She paused for a moment. “My father, both my parents, were … absolutely ridiculous. Everything I did, they’d act like I was the very first person in the history of Remnant to ever do that. If I came placed eighth in a race, they’d act like I won; they celebrated every stupid little thing about me like it was impressive, and it just go so annoying! But, and this is the thing that it took me a while to appreciate it, they did all of that awful stuff because they loved me. You know that Pyrrha didn’t speak to her mom all through last semester, right?”
Penny nodded. “Because of what her mother did … something about Jaune, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that, yeah; she really didn’t like the idea of them being together,” Rainbow said. “But that didn’t mean that she didn’t love Pyrrha. If she didn’t love Pyrrha at all, then she wouldn’t have cared. Starlight’s father babies her anytime she comes in reach; Sunburst’s mother treats him like a screw-up she needs to fix and make successful. Jaune’s parents didn’t want him to come to Beacon, as I understand it, and Blake’s parents … the point is that we’ve all got issues with our parents. I think just about everyone has issues with their parents — it’s a part of growing up — but it doesn’t mean that they don’t care… in fact, it’s because they care that they annoy us so much, even if it’s because they care too much. So don’t take it out on your father and don’t turn away from him, because if you do … if you do, then you’ll regret it, especially when he’s not around anymore.”
“So I should just give in?” Penny said. “I should just give up, accept what other people want for me?”
“I didn’t say that, and no,” Rainbow said firmly. “No, not at all. Not that at all.” She took a deep breath. “This is the part that Ciel didn’t want me to say because she thinks … she thinks that you should give in, if only because she doesn’t see a way out for you, but let me ask you something Penny: what do you want?”
Penny didn’t reply.
“You can say anything,” Rainbow said. “It doesn’t matter what I think or what Ciel thinks.”
“Really?”
“You should be nice to Ciel, but she doesn’t get to control your life; none of us do.”
Again, Penny hesitated, before she said, “I want to stay at Beacon.”
Rainbow had thought as much. She nodded. “Then I’ll make that happen,” she said. She wasn’t sure exactly how yet, or what it would cost, but she would make it happen.
She was — for now — Penny’s team leader, which meant that she could do no less.