Penny for Your Thoughts (Rewritten)
Penny for Your Thoughts
“Thanks for coming, both of you,” Rainbow said as she led them down one of the metallic corridors of the Valiant. “Penny’s really going to appreciate seeing you both.”
“It’s no trouble, really,” Pyrrha replied. She was following directly behind Rainbow Dash, while Sunset trailed behind a little. “It’s the least we can do for a friend.”
“Even so, she’s still going to appreciate it,” Rainbow said over her shoulder. She stopped outside a door which looked, to Pyrrha’s untrained eyes, just like many other doors that they had passed on the Atlesian warship: a sheet of undecorated metal, poised to slide open to admit them. This door did not slide open, however; it remained resolutely shut, despite how close they were to it.
Rainbow leaned against the wall with one elbow, her hand hovering near the black keypad mounted alongside the door. “The door is locked to stop anyone from coming in and seeing Penny… you know. I have the code; I’ll unlock it to let you in. Once you’re done, you can leave; it’s not locked from the inside; Twilight can show you out to your airship.”
“You aren’t coming in with us?” Sunset asked as she moved from behind Pyrrha to standing alongside her.
Rainbow did not reply, nor for a moment did she make any move to actually open the door. Instead, she glanced down at her feet, and then looked back up at the pair of them. “I… I was assigned to Penny; she didn’t choose me. She didn’t choose any of us. She chose you girls,” she said, looking more at Sunset than at Pyrrha as she said it; something had changed between those two since Mountain Glenn, although Pyrrha didn’t know exactly what had changed and didn’t feel able to pry.
Nevertheless, something had changed; they seemed… closer perhaps; certainly, all of the antagonism – even the mock, playful kind – seemed to have gone out of them. That would have been a good thing, except that it was accompanied by a certain sense of dour melancholy afflicting at times both Rainbow and Sunset. Pyrrha, who was no stranger to degrees of dour melancholy herself, supposed that they were downcast by the results of the battle.
She supposed that she could understand that. Many people were downcast by the results of the battle. She… it might be hypocritical to say so, but she thought that they were asking too much of themselves. It was one thing to hold yourself to high standards, as she did, but another to ask the impossible. She had not wished to die in the dark, but her near death at the hands of that grimm, whatever its name was, did not dismay her nearly as much as her failure to defeat Cinder in combat for that very reason.
The loss of a comrade was always to be regretted, and the loss of six lives was a tragedy for all connected with them, but when one considered how large was Vale and how much, how many lives, had been at stake, it was impossible, for Pyrrha at least, not to conclude that they had won a glittering victory. Not one that would be attributed to any of them or their skill, true, a victory that would adorn the brows of the Atlesians and their technological prowess, but a splendid victory nonetheless. In years to come, when they spoke of men’s great triumphs over the grimm, the Breach would stand alongside Ozpin’s Stand as a day when mankind had stood against the tide of darkness and turned it back decisively.
It was a pity that neither Sunset nor Rainbow seemed able to see that.
It was not about the glory; it was more than Pyrrha’s hope that it was not; she genuinely did not believe that either of them were so vain that they would find disconsolation in a victory merely because they had not been rewarded with sufficient praise and recognition for it. No, it was the loss of life, if anything, that weighed upon their shoulders.
Unfortunately, and perhaps this was a cowardice in her, she knew not how to take it away without exposing herself to a charge of callousness.
"I'm going to be a friend to her while she’s away from you," Rainbow said. "I'm… gonna try to, anyway. But you two… Pyrrha, you and Ruby have always been there for Penny, from the moment you met her, you've been the friends that she needed and that… the friends that she can’t believe she has in her own team because of… how this team came to be. Thank you, Pyrrha, and if Ruby doesn't wake up before we go, make sure to thank her for me as well, won't you?"
"No thanks are necessary," Pyrrha replied. "It was my pleasure, and my privilege, and I'm sure that if Ruby were here, she would say the same. You don't need to thank me for something that has brought me great joy."
"Yeah, I do," Rainbow said softly. She glanced at Sunset. "And Sunset… I'm still not sure that I believe this whole not-human thing, but if it is true-"
"It is," Sunset insisted.
"Then what are you doing here?" Rainbow demanded.
Sunset folded her arms. "I'm the last survivor of a dead planet, sent here by my mother to be a light to inspire mankind to greatness."
"Really?"
"No!" Sunset snapped. "How long have you known me? Do I seem like the kind of person who could inspire others?"
"You've inspired me," Rainbow said softly.
Sunset's mouth opened, but no words emerged. Her mouth hung open momentarily, like a puppet with a broken hinge, before she looked away. "Well… I'm not. If anyone was going to turn out to be sent by some otherworldly force to inspire everyone, it would be Pyrrha."
"You give me too much credit by a great distance," Pyrrha murmured.
"Well… whatever you are," Rainbow said. "Penny… it's meant a lot to her that you told her that, so thank you too. Though I hope you're prepared to give some details, because she's going to ask, and unlike me, she's going to be persistent about it." She paused. "So if you could tell her the truth-"
"I will," Sunset promised, not mentioning that she had already shared the truth with Pyrrha, Jaune, Ruby, and Blake.
Rainbow nodded. "I appreciate it. So the answer to your question is no, I'm not coming in with you. I'd only get in the way – I'll give Penny some time alone with the people she wants to spend time with – and besides, I need to finish writing my report for General Ironwood. I'm not sure that he'll like it, but hopefully, he'll appreciate my… honesty."
"What do you mean to tell him?" Pyrrha asked, wondering what Rainbow might have to say that might upset General Ironwood.
"That we shouldn't have been there," Rainbow said calmly. "That the mission should have been assigned to a specialist squad, not to first-year students."
"I think you do us a disservice," Pyrrha murmured. "We were chosen for a reason."
"It doesn't mean the reason was good," Rainbow replied. "I know we did the best we could-"
"And Vale survived," Pyrrha pointed out. "With very little blood shed."
"With more experienced personnel, it might have been no blood shed," Rainbow said. "That's what I think, anyway, and that's what I'll say in my report. You don't have to agree with me, and neither does the General, but I owe it to Penny and Ciel to put it on record and tell the General that I think he made a mistake."
"Professor Ozpin believed that we were ready to join this fight," Pyrrha insisted.
"And do you still believe him?" Rainbow asked.
Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. It was not the Mistralian way to refuse an honour offered or done to one, and as much turmoil as Professor Ozpin had sown within her heart when he told her the truth of what was going on out in Remnant, as much as he had sown fear and uncertainty in her, she yet believed that the headmaster had done her – had done them all – great honour by choosing them to be part of his latter-day circle. To be chosen to possess secret knowledge denied to other men, to be chosen to stand as a champion of light against the darkness, to be chosen by the defender of the world to be a soldier in his silent war, that was honour indeed, a testament to their skills and to their virtues both alike. Yes, Cinder had escaped her grasp, yes, she had been in peril of her life, but at the same time…
"I am not sure that anyone else could have done better than we did," she murmured, although she did not mention that that fact was as much cause for trepidation as for rejoicing.
"Well… I'm glad you feel that way," Rainbow said, seeming to take Pyrrha's words as much more enthusiastic than she actually felt. "Anyway, I… I'll leave you alone with Penny."
"Thank you," Pyrrha said. "And I hope that your report doesn't get you into too much trouble."
Rainbow grinned. "I'll be fine," she reassured Pyrrha before typing in some numbers onto the keypad next to the door, her fingers moving too quickly for Pyrrha's eyes to follow and make out the combination.
Not that she needed to. It wasn't as though she was planning to steal her like a thief in the night, after all.
And even if she had been, getting through the door would have been the least of her worries.
In any case, the door slid open; Rainbow stood to one side, out of sight, while Pyrrha led the way inside, followed by Sunset.
On the other side of the door – which slid closed behind them with a hydraulic hiss – was a clean, polished, and shiningly metallic room. All of the blades of Floating Array had been placed side by side upon a long workbench on the right-hand side of the room as Pyrrha entered, while various notes and diagrams and schematics were pinned to a board above the bench. On the far side of the room, opposite Pyrrha, in the left-hand corner, was another bench with a computer terminal and – the one untidy element in the room – papers spread out higgledy-piggledy across the surface. Twilight sat there, her back to the terminal, although she got to her feet when they came in.
And in the centre of the room lay Penny, laid out upon the bench, her hands by her side, as still as a corpse laid out for burial – or perhaps autopsy would be the more appropriate comparison, considering the circumstances and the fact that she was, somewhat disconcertingly, completely naked.
It was like looking at a child's doll, with all the… absences that that implied.
Only in Penny's eyes was there any difference from corpse or doll, for her eyes still moved, still looked, still seemed to brighten a little as Pyrrha and Sunset entered. "Pyrrha. Sunset," she said, in a voice that was deep, male, and rather devoid of emotion – especially for Penny. "You came."
Pyrrha's brow furrowed beneath her circlet. "Penny?" she asked. "Is… is that you?"
"My speech centre is still disabled, but Twilight connected me to the computer so that I could speak through it," Penny explained. "I'm sorry that I don't sound like myself, but at least I can talk to you."
"No need to apologise, Penny," Sunset said, stepping out from behind Pyrrha. "These things happen. I remember one time, when I was a kid, I got really sick – really stay in bed sick, and my throat, not only did my throat kill me, not only did it feel like I was getting stabbed every time I swallowed anything, but my voice dropped a whole two octaves at least, and I sounded like this." For those last few words, she forced her voice downwards into a sort of croak.
"Haha," Penny said, "but I'm not sick."
“No,” Pyrrha agreed. “But you were wounded in battle, and that is not a thing to apologise for. Rather, I feel as though I ought to apologise for being taken by surprise; as you say, it’s good that you can speak to us.” She tried to keep her eyes on Penny’s face, but it was a little difficult when she was… “Um, that being said… Twilight… why does Penny need to be, um…” She gestured at Penny’s unclothed form.
Twilight let out a squeak of embarrassment. “Sorry!” she exclaimed. “I had to take her clothes off in order to conduct a thorough physical exam, and then… well, I was there when Penny was created, so it doesn’t seem strange to me. But I should have thought. Sorry.” She grabbed a sheet from under her desk, telekinetically summoning it up into the air where it unfurled like a banner before descending upon Penny to cover her up from the neck down. Twilight’s hands glowed with a soft lavender light as she smoothed out the blanket. “There, is that better?”
“Yes, thank you,” Pyrrha murmured. Apart from anything else, it made it much easier to lock eyes with Penny and to keep her gaze fixed upon Penny’s gaze – or at least on Penny’s face when Penny’s gaze wandered to Sunset or anyone else. She approached the bench, her hands clasped in front of her. “How…?” Despite the fact that Penny was no longer exposed, Pyrrha could confess to herself that she yet felt a touch of uncertainty regarding what to say. Never before had Penny’s nature as a robot seemed more intrusive to her. She couldn’t even be sure of the wisdom of so innocuous a question as ‘how are you?’ Could Penny even feel anything at the moment?
Calm down. Don’t overthink it – as hard as that might be for you. Just talk to her like you would to anyone else.
After all, that’s why she likes you, because you treat her just like… well, because you don’t treat her any differently.
Pyrrha crouched at the knees, bending down so that she no longer loomed over Penny quite so alarmingly. “How are you doing, Penny?”
Penny was silent for a while. “Is Ruby going to be okay?”
“We think so,” Sunset said.
“We hope so,” Pyrrha murmured.
“Okay, yes, we hope so,” Sunset conceded. “But we hope… we hope with good cause.” Her tail twitched. She sighed as she ran one hand through her red-and-gold hair. “It’s true that I don’t really understand how Ruby’s magic works, but we know that it isn’t some power that Ruby came into overnight. This is something that was passed down to her through generations of Silver-Eyed Warriors, warriors who were once celebrated in song and story for all that they have largely been forgotten now, warriors including Ruby’s own mother, whose words we have. We know that she used this power without taking permanent harm from it, we know that others before her used this power; it stands to reason that Ruby can use it too, without… I don’t know why it’s done this to her – inexperience, maybe – but nothing that I know, nothing that we know, suggests that this is permanent. Ruby will come back to us. We just have to be… patient, it seems.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Penny said.
“You’re also dodging the question,” Sunset pointed out, her eyes narrowing.
Penny fell silent. Her eyes, the only part of her that could move, flicked from side to side, looking at neither Sunset nor Pyrrha.
“Penny?” Pyrrha asked.
“I hate this,” Penny admitted. “I wish that I could speak to you in my own voice. I wish that I could hug you. I wish that Ruby were here.”
Pyrrha reached out and put a hand on Penny’s sheet-covered shoulder. “We all wish for all those things, Penny.”
“I don’t even feel that,” Penny said in what Pyrrha thought would probably have been a tone of lamentation if she had been able to put any tone into her voice at all. “I wish that I could. I wish… I wish that I wasn’t such a disappointment. Such a failure.”
Twilight frowned. “Penny, no one thinks that-”
“Penny does,” Pyrrha said gently, “don’t you?” She frowned in turn. “It doesn’t matter if no one else thinks that way; it doesn’t matter if everyone continues to hold you in the highest regard. Maybe we are our own worst critics, but that doesn’t make the criticism any less real, does it?”
Penny’s eyes widened. “But you can’t possibly feel that way, Pyrrha.”
“Can’t I?” Pyrrha asked. “But you can?”
Penny was silent a moment. “I was created to save the world.”
“And that has been my destiny, my dream, since I was old enough to understand what destiny meant,” Pyrrha replied.
“What it might mean,” Sunset muttered.
Pyrrha ignored that. “You’re not the only one who failed underneath Mountain Glenn.”
Penny looked into Pyrrha’s eyes. “Is this about the tunnel? I heard… I mean-”
“Rainbow told us what happened,” Twilight murmured apologetically.
Pyrrha winced. “Well… what happened down there was… certainly less than ideal,” she conceded, “and I am… I regret that Ruby had to put herself in that condition saving my life, but… no, that is not what vexes me most about what happened beneath the city of the dead.”
“No?” Penny asked.
“No,” Pyrrha agreed, shaking her head. “Whatever that grimm was, it was… rather large, probably very old, and undoubtedly rather powerful. If Ruby hadn’t been with us, I’m not sure what we would have done… but I must confess that I’m struggling to think what any huntsman or huntress would have done.” She smiled, if only a little. “Except, perhaps, for you. With your laser cannon, you’re perhaps the only one of us, the only huntsman that I can think of, who might have stood a chance against that beast.”
“But I wasn’t there,” Penny said, “because I had already been taken out by some guy.”
“You were taken by surprise,” Pyrrha argued. “At least you weren’t stymied in single combat, the one thing that you are supposed to be supremely good at-”
“Are you two really going to stand or lie there arguing about which one of you sucks the most?” Sunset snapped. Her gaze was sharp, and her ears were pressed down angrily into her hair. “You...” – she took a deep breath – “you are both idiots! And that’s saying something, coming from me!”
Pyrrha looked at her, and as she looked at her, she straightened up, her hand leaving Penny’s shoulder. “Sunset, I-”
“And you were the one who pointed out that we won!” Sunset added.
“Well… yes,” Pyrrha murmured. “But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be disappointed in myself.”
“Why, because you didn’t beat Cinder?” Sunset said. “Did it ever occur to you, when you were lamenting that your vaunted prowess did not enable you to carry all before you like a tidal wave swamping the shore, that you probably don’t get to be Salem’s champion if you’re not pretty damn handy in a fight yourself?”
“I’m not a fool, Sunset,” Pyrrha said, in a tone of soft rebuke. “I didn’t expect to defeat Cinder easily.”
Sunset snorted. “If it helps at all,” she said, “I doubt that Cinder is crowing over her victory. If she even considers it a victory at all. She was expecting you to be a pushover, you know.”
Pyrrha’s eyebrows rose. “A… a pushover.”
“That’s… one of the reasons why she hates you,” Sunset informed her. “She thinks that you’re-”
“Hollow,” Pyrrha whispered. “A name, and someone who owes everything to that name, someone with more wealth and unearned prestige than actual ability.”
A moment of silence descended on the room.
“How did you know that?” Penny asked.
“She wouldn’t be the first,” Pyrrha declared. Even Arslan had believed it so, once upon a time. “Usually, I prove those who think such things of me wrong in a far more decisive fashion.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing to beat yourself up about.”
“I am the Champion of Mistral,” Pyrrha said proudly. “I am… I am the Invincible Girl.”
Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you didn’t like that name.”
“I… I liked the fact that I had never lost a battle.”
“You still haven’t,” Sunset pointed out.
“Perhaps that is so, but it is no longer true that I have won every battle, is it?” Pyrrha replied.
“You are my best friend,” Sunset said, “but you’ll forgive me if my heart doesn’t bleed for your injured pride in this particular instance. And you,” she added, looking at Penny, “yes, you’ve been injured. I’ll even concede that you have been injured badly, and that being what you are, being injured is… a little harder on you than for the rest of us. But look at this.” She pulled up her purple tunic to reveal the scar on her belly from where Adam had stabbed her. “You remember where I got this?”
“On the train,” Penny said.
“On the train,” Sunset agreed. “On the train, saving Twilight. And I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my days, a token of his esteem. Ruby nearly got cut in half and would have died on the docks if Jaune hadn’t found his semblance at just the right time, you remember that too?”
“Yes,” Penny said, “but I don’t understand-”
“It happens to the best of us,” Sunset said firmly. “It happened to Ruby, it happened to me; now it’s happened to you as well. About the only person that it hasn’t happened to is the Invincible Girl over there who is busy pounding on herself because she’s only the Invincible Girl now, and not the Undefeatable Girl, what a tragedy!”
“Sunset,” Pyrrha began.
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” Sunset demanded. “How lucky we all are? We faced death down there in Mountain Glenn: chills, that ursa thing, that even worse grimm with the bones, Adam Taurus, Cinder’s team, Cinder, an entire grimm horde! We walked into a city of the dead, and we came out again. Every last one of us, and we got Applejack back, and we got Fluttershy back, and we fought a battle at the end of it on top of everything else!” Sunset’s voice was rising in pitch, trembling with agitation. Tears started to prick at the corners of her eyes. “And we survived. You all survived, and yet, you have the gall to stand here and lie there and complain that you didn’t win as hard as you wanted to, that you didn’t live up to your own expectations. But you’re alive. You are both alive. We are all alive, and that… that is worth the dinging of a reputation, don’t you think? That is worth celebrating more than… more than anything else is worth mourning, right?”
“Practice what you preach,” Pyrrha said softly.
“I may be a hypocrite, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Sunset retorted. She wiped at her eye with one hand. “Pyrrha, if… if anything happened to you, it wouldn’t just be Jaune’s heart that broke. And Penny… I admit that we don’t know each other very well, but you’ve been a really good friend to Pyrrha and Ruby, and you’re a sweet kid, and… and I’m glad that I have the chance to get to know you better.”
She stepped forward, holding out one hand as she did so, and as she stepped forward, her outstretched hand glowed green, the green light of Sunset’s magic enveloping Penny – sheet and all – to lift her and her covering, which wrapped around her like a hospital gown, off the bench and into Sunset’s embrace. Sunset wrapped her arm around her, gloved fingers almost reaching up to Penny’s hair.
A smile crossed Sunset’s face, even as tears continued to form in the corner of her eye. She looked at Pyrrha, and her smile widened a little as she held out her free hand.
Pyrrha hesitated for a moment, before any resistance that she might have possessed crumbled in the face of Sunset’s smile, the passion that was almost anger in her voice as she rebuked them both, the words spoken with, she had to admit, both head and heart. Any resistance that she might have possessed crumbled in the face of the fact that it looked rather nice and inviting over there. She leapt over the bench, her boots tapping on the floor as they hit the ground for a moment before she enveloped Sunset and Penny in her arms and felt Sunset’s other hand upon her back in turn.
“Perhaps we can do this again when I can feel it?” Penny asked.
Sunset laughed, her whole body trembling. “Sure, Penny,” she agreed. She bowed her head, resting her forehead upon Pyrrha’s shoulder. “You’re alive,” she said, her voice a little more muffled now because of where she was. “You’re alive, and that is worth so much more than your records or performances. That is… that is everything.”
“As the General would say,” Twilight said, before she cleared her throat and deepened her voice in a not particularly good impression of General Ironwood. “That you made a mistake doesn’t say anything about you; what says everything about you is how you learn from it afterwards.”
“That was terrible,” Sunset said bluntly.
“I know,” Twilight admitted. “I can’t get my voice deep enough.”
“But what am I supposed to learn?” Penny asked, as Sunset – releasing Pyrrha at the same time – levitated her back down onto the bench, still covered in her sheet.
“Well,” Pyrrha said, walking past Sunset to the bench where Penny’s swords, detached from her, were all laid out, “you were injured when Lightning Dust was able to shock you through the wires connecting you to your swords, correct?”
“That’s right,” Penny said.
“Hmm,” Pyrrha murmured. “May I?” she asked, gesturing to one of the swords.
“I don’t mind,” Penny said. “Is it okay, Twilight?”
Twilight shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“Thank you,” Pyrrha said softly as she picked up one of the blades from off the workbench.
It was longer than she was used to in a sword, much longer than Miló in sword configuration, as long even as her weapon in its spear form. She held it thoughtfully in one hand and then shifted into a two-handed stance. It felt natural in either one.
“These are fine swords,” she said. “Do you know how to use them?”
“Of course,” Penny said. “You’ve seen me using them.”
“I’m not talking about directing them through the wires,” Pyrrha said. “I’m talking about holding them in your hands. Do you know how to do that?”
She suspected that the answer was no, purely based upon the fact that she had never seen Penny do so.
“No. I’ve only ever trained to use the wires.”
“The swords aren’t designed for handheld use,” Twilight said.
“Sunset, would you mind giving me some space?” Pyrrha asked. Sunset did so, retreating into the far corner of the room while Pyrrha flowed like water through several sword stances, rapidly moving from form to form, striking down imaginary enemies all around her. “The balance is excellent,” she said. “The weight is tolerable, and the edge is sharp. These blades might not have been designed to be wielded, but whoever designed them knew too well what they were doing to produce an inferior weapon.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” Twilight said, “They were Doctor Scarlatina’s contribution. Amongst his many talents, he’s also the finest bladesmith in Atlas. He probably couldn’t design a bad sword if he wanted to.”
Pyrrha set the blade down upon the bench. “If you had been facing Lightning Dust with a sword in your hands rather than blades upon wires, then any shock she might have inflicted on you would have been absorbed by your aura, the same way it would if she delivered me a shock through Miló. At present, it seems you're rather vulnerable against electrical attacks, but that wouldn’t be the case any more. And you wouldn’t be at such a disadvantage fighting in enclosed spaces. Something to think about when you get back on your feet.”
Penny’s eyes were wide. “You could work out what the problem was just like that? You’re amazing, Pyrrha.”
“Hardly,” Pyrrha said. “This is very rudimentary. Have you found your semblance yet?”
“My father isn’t sure that I have one,” Penny said.
“If you have aura, then you have a semblance,” Pyrrha said. “And you can unlock it with proper training.” If she could unlock it then, depending on what her semblance was, it would be another way for Penny to protect herself or engage her opponents without having to rely solely upon her ability to direct her swords.
“Do you really think so?”
“Do you think that I would lie to you?” Pyrrha asked earnestly.
“No,” Penny said at once. “Of course not. I’ll keep trying. Thank you, Pyrrha.”
Pyrrha smiled. “You’re very welcome, Penny.”
“Sunset,” Penny said. “Can I ask you something?”
Sunset grinned. “Do you want to know what I really am?”
“Yes,” Penny replied. “I’d like to know; if you’re not human, then what are you?”
The smile remained on Sunset’s face as she raised a hand and levitated a blank piece of paper up into the air beside her. Moving across the room so that she was once more within Penny’s sight, Sunset twitched her fingers, and the paper began to fold, delicately and with great precision, fold after fold compounding upon one another until what had been a sheet of paper just a few moments ago had become, through no magic at all – save the fact that Sunset hadn’t actually used her fingers – a perfect origami unicorn which settled in the palm of Sunset’s hand.
“You can do origami?” Pyrrha asked.
Sunset glanced at her. “I can do anything that I set my mind to, Pyrrha,” she said breezily before she showed the paper unicorn to Penny. “I,” Sunset said, “am a magical unicorn from the land of Equestria.”
"Really? You don't look like a unicorn," Penny pointed out, not unreasonably.
"No," Sunset allowed. "But that's because I travelled to this world through a magic mirror, and that magic turned me into this, so that I could fit in here amongst all of you."
"I see," Penny said. "So why did you come here?"
Sunset hesitated for a moment. "Because… because I wanted more," she said. "All my life, I felt as though I deserved more. So much more than they had planned. And so, I sought a place where I could make a life for myself. A great, splendid life, unbound and unbounded."
"That sounds wonderful," Penny said.
Sunset shrugged. "Well, it brought me here, so it wasn't all bad." She grinned.
"What's it like, the world you come from?" Penny asked.
"Equestria?" Sunset said. "Equestria is… Equestria is… where do I even start? Equestria is a very silly place, the sort of place where ponies decorate in hearts for no reason at all except because they can, the kind of place where songs break out in the streets just because one pony felt like singing and everypony else felt compelled to join in, the sort of place where… where the apples are always juicy and red, and the sun is almost always shining. I suppose you could say it's a picture book sort of world, like something out of a fantasy… except it's real. A world where unicorns wield magic just like mine, where pegasi control the weather and walk on clouds, where earth ponies can feel the rhythm of the land beneath their hooves."
"That all sounds so lovely," Penny declared.
"Yeah," Sunset murmured. "Yeah, it… it really is."
"I wish I could see it for myself," Penny said.
Sunset was silent for a moment, thrusting her hands into her jacket pockets as she looked down at the origami unicorn that she had made. She furrowed her brow. "You know," she said, "let me know when you get better, because it's possible, just possible, that I might just be able to make something happen."
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Well this was an all around good fluff chapter, we get to see more into Pyrrha's and Penny's heads and their interactions are adorable.
Although it looks like Rainbow might still be thinking about the conversation she had last chapter.
This was a very nice chapter, of not a bit ironic due to cannon.
If Twi can get rid of Penny's "strings" with that magic battery Sunset made, on top of fallowing Pyrrha's advise she would be a nasty fighter once back on her feet.
God hopefully Cinderp's stoopidity won't kill the Poledina...
The new Phynny interaction would make it even harder
9576781
I don't particularly care if politics get included in a story or not but I do agree the sexuality stuff seems out of place in the world of remnant. Like you said sexuality doesn't seem like it would be an issue. To give an example in volume six we have two women in a relationship with each other with a child and there is not a single comment about this so that tells me it's not a big deal.
Okay. This chapter tugged at my heartstrings to see Pyrrha and Penny together like this.
Thumbs up if you miss these two.
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The only reason this fic exists is because I miss these two (okay, it was mostly Pyrrha, but that doesn't mean I'd miss the chance to save Penny too)
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And also because of a healthy love of MLP and what it can bring to the world of Remnant, of course.
Once again, you have woven a beautiful balance with Sunset Shimmer who wants glory and Pyrrha who shuns it.
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I would love to be able to wholeheartedly agree with you on this, but the truth is that this only became an MLP crossover by a kind of accident/necessity. You see, my original thought process went very much like this:
I want to write a fanfic where Pyrrha doesn't die but hooks up with Jaune.
Alright, but how?
Hmm...I'll introduce an overpowered OC to save Pyrrha from Cinder at the tower.
Oh, come on, everyone knows those kind of stories are awful, no one's going to want to read it.
Good point...okay, I'll introduced an overpowered crossover character, that's perfectly legit!
Fine, but who?
Hmm...someone from a fandom I like, someone I can write, someone powerful, someone committed, someone who would do whatever it took to save a friend, someone who could theoretically get to Remnant...
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/b294ec25-1b02-4932-a3d1-9ddce55bd439/d97tmwo-f05e2747-4469-4fe8-a214-d311719f40ed.png/v1/fill/w_849,h_941,strp/smug_sunset_shimmer_by_illumnious_d97tmwo-pre.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NDQ3NiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2IyOTRlYzI1LTFiMDItNDkzMi1hM2QxLTlkZGNlNTViZDQzOVwvZDk3dG13by1mMDVlMjc0Ny00NDY5LTRmZTgtYTIxNC1kMzExNzE5ZjQwZWQucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTQwMzcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.kREYwv_Ylb4wzbjaPCLuHuzPPAdYefmpWIqiw6XUE4s
Oh, well of course.
And it just kind of snowballed from there, really.
This was some wonderful character reaction. I can't really think of a time in the show where Pyrrha and Penny talked before their fight in the Vytal Festival. Could be wrong about that, though. Regardless, if Pyrrha (or anyone, really, but I think she did well with Jaune) could train Penny to actually wield her swords, that'd do wonders for her survivability.
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And after all, the teachings and values of Friendship fit beautifully with the dynamic of the Teams, and there's nothing Pyrrha wanted more than to live her life with true friends at her side.
Of course!
The greatest treasures are not gold, nor jewels, nor works of art.
They cannot be held in your hands oh, they are held within your heart.
For worldly things will fade away, as the seasons come and go.
But the treasure of true Friendship will never lose its glow.
Thinking about it now, and with what we know on volume 6, I'm thinking gravity dust would be a huge help with penny's swords, where each sword is tethered to a specific node inside her and can make it come back whenever she wants. If it was a normal hunter they'd only be able to control one set (i.e.: Maria and her gravity scythes) but since penny is a robot, and can process stuff much faster, I'm sure she'd be able to control multiple.
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Just stumbled right into the most engaging story on the site, eh.
I feel that Penny and Pyrrha’s conversation, among many others, have happened before, and practically verbatim as well. I haven’t explicitly confirmed it either way, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to comb through such a massive story as this to fix such a thing, however.
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The story is being rewritten, and some conversations have been shuffled around (since some events have been shuffled around).
Maybe that is what you have noticed.
Ah the struggles of reading a fic in the middle of the rewrite, I know the scene where Pyrrha discovers Penny's androidness has happened before because I read back in Cold Harbour.
I guess I'll be seeing some minor repeated scenes and things that no longer happened now? I'll push past it, this story is excellent.
So, Penny might come to see Equestria as well as Blake?
After watching her end in Volume 8, that would be more than beautiful. Just the idea of it pulls at my heartstrings! I can only imagine how Princess Celestia, Twilight, and all the others of Equestria would think of a fully sapient synthetic lifeform.
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Makes me curious as to what Penny would turn into... I could see a hippogryph, as something of a hybrid creature since she's not a pure AI like Midnight.
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But while her mind is completely sapient, Penny still has an artificial body, just as Pinnochio did. Not a natural birth. This is long before the spirit of the Staff of Creation granted her an organic body, making her a 'real girl'. So yes, I too wonder what kind of form Penny would be given.
Given the events of the recent chapters, the irony is strong in this one.
Oh the irony
The motherf***ing irony
This chapter made me go through to much emotion
Can someone help sunset, the girl clearly has depression
She already did that a couple chapters ago~
And oh boy. Considering 2 of my comments, that ending… has me very curious. Though, poor Blake does still need it…
Since it wasn't indicated that Twilight had left the room when Sunset divulged to Penny that she is a unicorn from Equestria, I think it's safe to say Twilight knows now too.
Ooh, road trip to Equestria!?