Arclight Foundries

Two days ago, the young man had come to get his spear, and she and Jaune had told Ruby goodbye for the last time before her big mission.

"Okay, try moving the leg now. Slowly, I want to watch the joints." He ordered, watching Penny lift the heavy, mechanical limb into the air with a mute whirring of motors and servos compensating for the weight and her balance. The metal plating that covered it it head to toe now muted almost all of it, enough that she blamed the sounds on the quiet of his 'shop rather than the machines themselves. Watching it, she heard when he murmured, "Good, good, looks fine from here so far… Doesn't look like it's sticking or anything."

"I do not feel any sticking in the pedals or hydraulics, no." She answered, even though he had been mostly talking to himself. "I believe that the adjustments were right on the pennies, as they say."

"That's 'right on the money', Penny." He corrected passively, nodding and smiling excitedly anyway, he sketched out how it looked while it moved on one side of a notebook he'd bought for this project and a description on the page across from it. "Okay, now set it down, gently as you can. It looks great, Penny, you did awesome with the control features in the helmet. How is everything on that end working?"

"All monitoring systems are functioning at one hundred percent, the interfaces are responding as intended, and the only problems I have seen are in the power measurement and regulatory systems." She turned her helmeted head, wires sticking out of it and along her back and connected to the wall for safety reasons, and nodded at them.

When she found an oddity, she ran a passive scan herself and 'guessed' the answer based on he rown internal readings, noting the power cycling through the power units and distributors and then along the cords attaching her to the wall. "Though I have a suspicion that is because of the constant power supply, rather than it relying on its internal power systems, friend-Jaune. That is not how I designed the os."

"I know, Penny, kind of expected the bug, honestly with how the armor systems report information through the micro-computers Coco bought me, and it's fine." Still, he flipped back a couple pages to a sheet on the helmet itself, jotting out the bug confirmation just so he had the information on hand. On the off chance he needed it, mainly, even if he had no idea what that would even possibly be. "How does it feel to, you know, move in? Any resistance or anything?"

"None at all, friend-Jaune." To demonstrate, and smiling under the edge of the mask and visor widely, she alternated raising and lower her legs quickly almost like she was jogging on the spot. In response, under the heavy weight of the couple hundred pounds of metal and wires, the workshop shook hard enough that the glass trembled in its frames.

After a second to realize what she was doing, she stopped as suddenly as she'd started and chuckled awkwardly, "I am sorry, friend-Jaune, I was merely excited. I have never helped so much on a project, and seeing it come to fruition is simply-"

"Sensational?" He raised an eyebrow, stained with grease, and smiled at her good naturedly. She returned the gesture, sheepishly instead, and he went on, "Yeah, I figured. You really like that word, you know. Do the cinder block test?"

"Of course." She nodded, kneeling somewhat awkwardly on the servos to pick up a head-sized cinder block he'd gotten from a construction site down the road and holding it in front of her c.h.e.s.t. "Like this, correct, friend-Jaune?"

"Yeah, now just…" He shrugged, and she knew he was anxious now. Could see the pinch to his smile, the sagging of his shoulders, even as he put on a brave face for her. This would be the fourth time she's done this part, and the failures were started to eat at him, she could tell that much. "Squish it, if you can, Penny. Without using your Aura or, um, anything. You shouldn't have to try all that hard if it's working right, just going through the motion should, uh, it should do it."

Nodding, she pressed the sides of the cinder block in gently, putting as little of her own effort into it as possible. After a few seconds, she gave Jaune a glance, the blonde watching her anxiously. It took her internal processing units all a total half a second to propose a solution to the problem, but far more for her to actually think about it. Consider all the possibilities, consequences she could predict with her algorithms, hardwired legal and military knowledge, and things that those didn't necessarily warn of or see. Things that she'd 'picked up' from Ruby and Jaune, how to predict people rather than protocol and to see emotional responses rather than systematic ones.

She liked to think that meant she was growing as a person, but she couldn't be sure. Whatever the case, it was thanks to Jaune and Ruby almost exclusively, and he needed her now. Her friend needed her help for something he considered precious to him, and something that had to be precious to her too as a result.

"Damn the consequences, full speed ahead, as Father says so often." Inside three seconds, then, her decision had been made and she used her body's wireless access module to connect to the helmet and diagnose the problem.

A small operating system error barely larger than a few lines of code, deep in one of the main processing units, prevented the hydraulics from properly over-riding the force she was exuding and breaking the cinderblock, even though she'd enabled the feature on the command HUD. The issue was with the custom os, she knew before she even checked, and it would take days to program around if not weeks.

Unless she did something drastic, that her father would not approve of… "But he does always say that helping a friend is the right thing to do, even if you have to break the rules to do it."

He couldn't get mad at her for just doing what he always said she should. He might even praise the decision, later on, depending on what happened. "Even if doing what he said means doing what he said not to do… This is so complicated."

Or maybe it wasn't, and she was making it complicated.

Five seconds into the test, she looked at her own processing codes that she used to manage her internal systems. Particularly, she looked to the Aura management and fine motor control operating systems, where numerous emergency over-rides were layered into her codes for combat. For defenses, movement, even some that would burn Aura to power her weapon systems and body itself if she needed it.

She pulled the code free, along with a copy of some of her base coding to run it with, and laced it through the coding she'd made already. Much of both her personal codes, like her personality matrixes memory storage protocols and the like, she disabled along with the control functions of the one she'd made, using the helmet's very open space for data storage to house its extra features and attached nodes. Things she couldn't separate from the control functions without ruining the functionality of the programs themselves were stored there, and the needed code laced over her old, hand-made code.

Copying her work would be easy, she knew, because simply copying code was easier than making it. So even mass production wouldn't cause any problems, they'd also just have a bit of her in them in a much more literal sense than she knew the phrase normally meant.

She found that she liked that quite a lot, as her code changes kicked in and, ten seconds into the test, the cinder-block shattered under the suit's strength and scattered across the floor.

"Yes!" Jaune cheered, almost leaping for joy and smiling widely at Penny. "It works! Finally, Gods, it works! A bit of delay in kicking on the override, I think, but we can fix that later. It works, though, Penny! Thank you so much."

"You do not have to thank me, friend-Jaune." She assured him, backing towards the wall and deactivating the armor. The front of its c.h.e.s.t and arms opened up with a hiss, and she set the helmet on a small hook behind her before working on unlatching the legs. "I am always willing to help my friends, Jaune."

As soon as she stepped free, he pulled her into a hug, saying into her ear, "You're one of my best friends, Penny, thank you so much. And don't even pretend that I shouldn't be on hands and knees thanking you right now."

"B-Best friends?" She was surprised, mouth twitching in a smile before she finally returned the arm embrace. "I'm one of your best friends? Really?"

"Of course, Penny. You've helped me so much, even when you didn't have to. What else could I even call you?" He pulled away with a warm, smiling at her brightly for a moment and then looking down at his charts again. "Now, I have to figure out what caused the delay."

"I…" She hesitated for only a second, thinking of Ruby. 'Best friends trust each other with everything,' she'd said, and Penny believed her completely. Taking a long and deep breath she didn't need, she stepped up beside Jaune and smiled nervously, "I... Already fixed it, and I have something to tell you, best-friend-Jaune."

"Oh? How did you already..." He glanced to her with an eyebrow raised, curious and nothing else until he saw her serious face. "What's wrong, Penny?"

"So…" He trailed off, not quite sure how to even respond to what he'd heard over the last hour and leaning against the window in his workshop and looking outside. "Let me just… Absorb all that, for a minute, Penny."

"Take all the time you need, friend-Jaune." She tried to smile, but it came out stiff and robotic, and now he was thinking that about everything she did.

"You're an android?" She nodded, sitting on a stool with her hands on her knees and staring at the backs of them like she was a teenager and he was her father who'd caught her sneaking out. "I… Guess that explains the way you talk, and your guards downstairs, and the whole not eating when you're here thing which was… Always kind of weird."

"I am the first artificial entity capable of generating my own Aura and learning independently." She parroted, voice quiet and anxious and eyes still boring into the back of her hands. "I was not designed for infiltration, however, and so I do not possess the means as of yet to eat and drink. My fat- Creator is working on that even now, I am told, to help me live a more normal life like a real girl."

"You are a real girl, Penny, at least… At least I think you are, I don't know, I guess." He sighed, shaking his head and running his stained fingers through his hair. "Is it… Is it bad I wanna know how you work? Like, mechanically I mean? I feel like it's simpler than going through all the philosophical mumbo jumbo."

"I do not have the allowance to explain my internal mechanisms to you or anyone else, General Ironwood required that as a safety feature in case I were ever captured. Though I am unsurprised that is where your interests go first, given your nature and career." She gave him a glance, green eyes sparking nervously, and added, "I thought you would be angry with me for not telling you. Or at Ruby, since she did not do so either."

"No. I mean… Kind of, in a stupid and petty way, but I get why you didn't tell me." She gave him a look and he smiled, winking at her in what he hoped was charming somehow. "Just let me know if you want me to buy you some batteries or oil, eh?"

"I charge at the base nearby every week, Jaune." She snorted, actually snorted at his joke, shaking her head and seeming to relax somewhat now that she wasn't as anxious. "Are we still friends, Jaune? Even though I kept what I was from you?"

"Of course we are, Penny." He waved the concerns off, dismissing them completely for the nonsense fears they were to him. Pointing at her he made a show of putting on a firm face, wagging the finger like a parent might. "You still have to be my quirky, adorable assistance, just like Ruby does. Just because you probably have, like, a vibrate function or something doesn't mean you can skip out."

After a couple seconds of staring into space, she looked at him and tilted her head, "I do not possess a 'vibrate function' friend-Jaune. Father spent his effort making me look and feel like a normal Human girl, and I do not think they vibrate. All my externals function as a human's and feel like it. Would you like me to show you?"

"I…" He saw her smirk widen, and g.r.o.a.n.e.d, "Oh, Gods, tell me you haven't been paying attention to Coco when she's around? I can't handle two of you! My heart will give out, the poor thing."

"I am only making jokes with you, like friends do, friend-Jaune." She smiled, "Miss Coco would have my head if I tried to-"

She stood as his building trembled, closing with him in two steps before he could trip over the stool beside him and fall. On the floor or out the window, he didn't know which, but neither would be good for him with his health. "Penny, what was that? Some kind of… Of explosion, or something?"

"One moment, Jaune." She said, setting him upright as her face went blank and she explained, "There's an Atlesian alarm signal being broadcast, friend-Jaune. The details are scattered, but a rallying point has been set, and reports of Grimm in the city are being transmitted to deployed units."

"Grimm in the city?!" That should be impossible, how would they have even gotten in? Pressing his face against the window, he could see a pillar of smoke crawling into the sky a couple of streets over and swallowed anxiously. "That's, uh, that's really close by, Penny."

"You will be perfectly safe, friend-Jaune." Penny was quick to assure him, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes in some probable hope to calm him down. "My guards and I are being ordered not to intervene, Huntsmen and Huntresses from Beacon as well as military assets are being directed to and my orders say to stay on standby. I am still technically a secret, after all."

"Beacon…" Coco, and Ruby too if she was around, probably then. He felt a pang of worry creep up his spine and into his c.h.e.s.t at that but grimaced and shook it off. "I, uh, I guess you can your guards can come up to the living floor to wait until you get a message saying we can relax or whatever."

"I will send for them immediately, friend-Jaune. We can watch movies or something while we wait, and my connection to the network will make sure we know when the crisis has passed." She nodded, smiling reassuringly and adding. "Do not worry about any of your friends at Beacon, friend-Jaune, I am sure they will all be just fine."

She disappeared down the stairs a second later and he looked at the dull silver, heavy armor in its almost finished form and smiled. "A little piece of her running it for me, huh? I knew she was a weird girl."

But, he was certain, a real girl. Hopefully, she'd accept that at some point, since she didn't seem to have done so just yet. There was plenty of time in their lives to convince her, though, so he wasn't worried. After all, they were all young. "Assuming she even ages…"

And she was right, his friends were trained and would be fine if they ended up fighting. Still, though, he sent Coco a quick message "Heard there were Grimm in the city, hope you're safe. Let me know asap."

A second later his Scroll chimed, and he rolled his eyes at the message, "Relax lover, on Bullhead 2 fight. Got my gun. Grimm don't do well against it for a lot of high-velocity reasons. Will call later. XOXO"