"Penny."

The ginger haired girl turned to the soldier that addressed her. "Yes sir?"

"I know this is your first live encounter, but be sure not to get as… overzealous… as you've been in training, alright?"

"Yes sir."

"Just remember that people live in these houses, alright?"

Penny gave a vigorous salute. "I will remember that, sir!" She saved the reminder as a new protocol to follow and recalled her previous training missions. All of the enemies that had run against her had been androids, but she had downloaded information on all of the known types of Grimm, and had installed combat protocols to teach her how to engage basic level enemies. What the sergeant had been referring to was her liberal use of her destructive powers in those training missions.

"Good, good… You don't have to call me sir by the way," he replied before averting his gaze a bit sheepishly, checking around the hull off their attack ship for anything interesting while they waited to drop into Vale.

Penny knew what was causing him to act odd. General Ironwood had told the sergeant that she had full autonomy, but also that he and his men were assigned to protect her. Technically he should be the one in charge, but Penny knew that his orders seemed to conflict, so she tried to acknowledge him as much as possible.

A crimson glow filled the hull, and the rear of their attack ship opened up to the empty space beneath them.

"Alright," the sergeant had to yell over the engines and wind rushing behind them, "We'll be dropping on the perimeter of the outbreak to prevent the Grimm from spreading into anymore of the city. The other teams will be doing the same, but since we're dropping on the main road-" he shot Penny a glance, "-we'll be pushing all the way through to each of the evac sites to-"

"What the fuck is that?!" A nearby soldier shouted, pointing towards a brilliant sphere of light in the distance, rapidly increasing in size.

Penny quickly ran diagnostics on the light. "Pure dust explosion. 1500 meter radius from my primary scan."

"Damn Atlesian measurements. That'd 9 or 10 blocks, right? Couple thousand feet?"

"Yes, that is approximately 5000 feet." 4921.26 feet to be precise, she wanted to say, but her behavior subroutines discouraged precise measurements when communicating with non-androids.

The sergeant shook himself out of his momentary trance of viewing the explosion and turned back to finish briefing the strike force.

"Alright, we'll let the other teams handle whatever the hell happened over there, we still need to stick to our mission." The sergeant quickly wrapped up his brief while the team made a final check on their gear before their drop.

Penny moved up to the ramp, scanning for an optimal place to insert her team. The Grimm seemed to envelop the main road once they approached the perimeter, apart from a few small pockets where battles were likely taking place. Penny zoomed into the nearest pocket to them on the main road.

Red.

Ruby? Penny tried to zoom in further, but the red cloaked figure was facing away from their attack ship. Whoever it was didn't seem to be moving, but beyond that, she couldn't make out any more detail.

"Sergeant, we're going to drop now, ok?" And with that, Penny leapt from the attack ship, 20 elite soldiers behind her in an instant, all free falling toward the ground to take on the Grimm.

Penny angled herself to steer as close as possible to the pocket she believed Ruby to be in. 100 meters, adjust course. Penny rotated her torso, turning her feet down and slammed into the ground, the force of her landing cracking the pavement around her.

People live in these houses. The sergeant's instruction popped up in her data queue, and she immediately registered regret at ruining the pavement.

Her escort had landed by now, splitting up to cover different areas. One pair had landed on the roofs on either side of the street to provide overwatch for the teams on the ground. Two teams of six moved to the side streets flanking the main road to make sure they wouldn't be flanked while the 4 remaining soldiers stayed well behind Penny, ready to provide backup in a moment's notice.

"Alright kid, this is your show. If anything goes wrong, or they start overwhelming you, activate your distress beacon and we'll open fire right away."

"Understood, sergeant." Penny quickly began an easy jog toward the action.

Beowolves, Ursai, Creeps, and Boarbatusks all turned their attention from the rubble around them to face the young girl.

She quickly deployed her blades, cutting through the first wave with a flick of her wrist, and the next with a sweeping move of her other arm. Quickly she cut through the Grimm in front of her, making short work of anything smaller than an Ursa Major, and even those she barely had to slow down to fight.

As she closed in on where she suspected Ruby to be, the amount of Grimm thinned out considerably, with an unusually high amount of rubble and fire around it, as if there had been another explosion nearby.

Her analysis of the area coupled with the extreme use of her combat functions drained her, and she stopped a moment to recover some lost power.

Suddenly three Ursa Majors rumbled out of a nearby home, smashing a hole through the wall not 10 meters from her. Penny, devoid of energy for combat, quickly pulsed her emergency beacon.

Shots rang out instantaneously, sniper rounds from the rooftops tearing the first two to shreds while the rearguard peppered the third with assault rifles, crippling it before it even had a chance to fight.

*Penny? What was that? Malfunction?* the sergeant's voice crackled over her internal radio before the third Ursa had even hit the ground.

"No sir, nothing like that. I just used a little too much power while fighting, sir."

*Remember, 20 percent is always in reserve. Once you get there, pull out to recharge.*

"Understood sir. I will remember that." She overrode her protocols to disregard the reminder. 20 percent is too much, it's much more efficient to hold at 15 percent, but the sergeant won't understand that.

A few seconds passed by as she recovered enough energy to press forward again. Meanwhile, her escort checked in with each other, giving reports on the flanks as well as receiving reports from other teams around the city.

The explosion had in fact been pure dust, or as the soldiers on the radio referred to it, a "dust nuke". Soldiers always have the most curious vocabularies, she thought while listening to their chatter. Apparently the breach was already clear, as well as the region on the complete opposite side of the main road as the dust nuke, as well as of course, the region affected by the nuke. For the most part, the city's infrastructure seemed to be intact apart from the main road.

Penny's battery indicator pinged that it was fully charged and she resumed her push towards Ruby's location.

After hardly any more resistance from Grimm, she approached the circle she saw from the sky. Rubble and fire formed a makeshift barrier to the pocket, keeping Grimm out from reentering the area. Penny easily traversed the rubble as her team quickly set up a perimeter on the intersection while calling for evac for the civilians trapped inside the corner building.

But none of that interested Penny. She was interested in the little girl in red, cradling a boy in her arms. Cautiously she approached, unsure of what to do. Only when she circled to approach from in front of the pair did she recognize Ruby. There was something off though…

"Ruby?"

Ruby didn't acknowledge if she heard Penny, she just continued to weep and squeeze the boy in her arms.

A few more steps closer. "Ruby? What's wrong?"

She heard her this time. Ruby's head shot up, her face stained with dirt, blood, and tears. Her silver eyes stared through Penny as tears flowed freely.

Penny realized what was off. The boy was missing his left arm.

Ruby buried her face in his chest again, gently rocking back and forth, quietly mumbling into his chest. Penny immediately pinged her one of her team's medics with her location, and within 10 seconds he was there and at Ruby's side.

"Hey, what's your name, sweetheart? Can you tell me your friend's name? What about what happened?"

Each question was only met with more muted sobbing.

After a quick glance back at Penny, the medic gently placed his fingers on the boy's neck, checking for a pulse, although Penny already knew the outcome.

"I'm sorry sweetie, but your friend isn't coming back. Can you come sit over here so I can make sure you're ok?"

More crying.

Slowly he pulled her arms off of the boy and set him on the ground. Ruby sat there, broken, while the medic put a black tag on her companion before turning to move her somewhere more protected.

As soon as he placed his hands on her arms to pick her up she began screaming, scrambling away from him, fear in her eyes as she lunged for Crescent Rose.

Penny sprang after Ruby, scooping up Crescent Rose before she could turn it on the medic.

"NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!" Ruby kicked out at the medic, dragging herself away from the man while never taking her eyes off of him.

"Ruby, no! He's only trying to help!" Penny quickly knelt next to the young girl, holding onto her while the medic prepped something to sedate Ruby.

Ruby squeezed tightly to Penny's arm that wrapped across her chest, unable to tear her eyes away from the needle that the medic had prepared for her. She squirmed, and pulled her legs in as tight to her body as possible, ready to kick out at him.

"Hey, it's ok, I'm only here to help. Look, this is just going to help you relax a bit so we can help patch you up, ok?" He took a step forward and she sent a kick at his kneecap, catching him with enough force to knock him backwards. He quickly tried to close the distance again, but Ruby had begun thrashing wildly, screaming at the top of her lungs for him to get away.

After pulling her friend close and stopping her flailing arms, the medic managed to stick the needle into Ruby's arm and pushing its contents.

"Shhh, it's alright now. You're ok, no one is going to hurt you."

Ruby slumped almost immediately, teetering a moment on the edge of consciousness before falling into that abyss. Penny watched as the medic gently took Ruby from her arms and moved to the makeshift hospital inside the building behind them.

Penny turned her attention to the boy on the ground. Ruby seemed very attached to him, but why? He had messy blonde hair and was in good shape, but she didn't think Ruby would react that way over someone just because they were handsome. No, he must have meant much more to her than that.

Meanwhile, the cavalry had arrived. General Ironwood's army of Atlesian Knights had landed and had begun quickly pushing out all of the Grimm in the city. The new fighting force meant her time was up for the field, and she headed to the roof to meet her escort for evac.

As she waited for her airship to touch down, she noticed the boy Ruby was with being loaded into a Bullhead nearby, destined for the morgue.

"Wait!" Penny called out to the men carrying the boy away. "Would you kindly load him onto this aircraft?" The soldiers shrugged and consented, quickly transferring the body onto Penny's attack ship. "Thank you."

The sergeant gave Penny a quizzical look, but kept his mouth shut as the aircraft took off, headed for home base.

…

It was night time when they touched down back at their home base, and Penny immediately had the boy put on a stretcher and wheeled it down the dark hallways herself. Not many people knew that the person she was going to see was in Vale, and even fewer knew his actual location. But Penny always knew where he was.

The wheels on the stretcher squeaked as she came to a stop outside a nondescript door deep within the building. She knocked lightly on the door frame before silently opening the door and taking a step inside the dimly lit room.

The only light came from a single bulb across the room. Gadgets and gizmos laid haphazardly on desks and shelves produced startling shadows throughout the room.

A quiet muttering came from the room's only occupant, seated beneath the light in the far corner of the room, his back turned to the door as he feverishly worked on some new contraption.

Penny quietly approached the figure, stopping well away from the lonely silhouette.

"Father? Can you help this boy?"