Capítulo 1899: 129
Chapter 129Chapter Text
"She's alive… if only barely. If… if she wasn't tangled up in these vines, then we could retrieve her but…"
Wakefulness came slowly to her, blinking blearily as her body began to activate again- low power mode, it seemed. Not too much motor control, barely any sensors online… she grimaced slightly, wondering why it was that she seemed so tired, so… lost.
Everything felt muggy and slow and… Penny blinked slightly, crusted over eyes flashing to life as the tiny drip feed of power from… something plugged into her ports allowed her to act little by little. She wasn't at a hundred percent. She wasn't anywhere near close… but… there was a soldier there, wasn't it? She could see a familiar-ish blob of white and blue and black. How long had she been asleep? It felt like an eternity…
"H-hello?" Penny whispered, barely audible as she tried to push herself up- only to realize that her left arm was still gone. That she was laying in a half reclined position, back up against… something, maybe a pile of convenient rubble…. She couldn't move very well either. But why? Her system diagnostics registered moderate damage but beyond her left arm, nothing seemed like it should be incapable of movement… She looked around, confused at the sheer darkness around her. Where… was she? The last thing she remembered was that she had poured every last drop of her energy, her soul, her willpower into that last strike against the Wyvern, trusting that Ruby would be able to win and…
And then she was here?
Inside of…
Penny looked down at herself, frowning as she realized she was covered in dark vines- thorny and cold and wooden and yet… familiar. Why were they familiar? She shook her head, grimacing as she tried to wriggle her way out of the dense foliage that covered her body, only to fail immediately due to her weakness and lack of power.
"Where am I?" Penny asked, frowning as she continued to struggle, if only barely. There was… the slow drip feed of power into her body was bringing more strength into her, but she had no idea what was actually plugged into the charging port at the small of her back- it was…
There didn't feel like there was any sensation back there, the touch sensors in her false skin deactivated due to that panel having raised up and moved out of the way in order to allow access to the port. Her systems chugged along, slower than they had in ages- though her mind and core were both completely intact and fully operational, all of her peripherals were slow to respond. Her sense of touch was muted, her sense of taste offline, her hearing barely picking up anything nearby… grimm sensors were deactivated, Dust triggers deactivated, laser software deactivated… just about the only thing that was still active in her body beyond her actual self was her internal thermoregulation!
"Ruby? Is… are you there, wishing star?" Penny asked the air, her voice barely above a whisper as she continued tugging at the black vines tangling at her legs, looking around and noticing more details coming out of the gloom as her visual processing unit spooled up to full capacity. It was… hellish, in a way. A throne room made of black and red matter, pulsating and writhing with vines that coiled around and around and around, thorns and spikes protecting bulging, engorged sacs of fluid that seemed to have no purpose beyond the sheer menace and danger they exuded. Where…?
This wasn't normal.
This wasn't normal at all.
Wait.
Penny groaned, hissing quietly as she tried to reach for Floating Array- the system itself was online, but with how low power she was now, it felt unlikely that she'd be able to do anything let alone break free and explore the… the place she was in.
Hadn't she heard a voice earlier?
Where had they gone? That soldier… she thought she'd seen a soldier… from Atlas.
He'd been… talking to someone?
"Hello? Is there anyone here?" Penny asked again, pushing her voice louder and wincing at the immediate drain on her power cells- she was barely even operational at the moment, and even at three percent total power… trying to do too much was ill advised. She might drain her batteries completely if she didn't… if she wasn't careful. "Please… I am… I am stuck! And… I need assistance!"
There was… something in the darkness. She could make out something before her, and as she continued to try and tug at the vines that were so stubbornly wrapped around her legs… something seemed to shudder . The world itself moved, it felt like- a sudden rumble that shook through her body and made Penny feel as though the entirety of the… building?... that she was in was about to collapse.
The movement, though, freed her legs- not without scratching or scraping, but the vines coiled tightly around her moved just enough that Penny could pull herself out… if a little haltingly. The inside surfaces of the vines weren't spiky or thorned as the outsides, but… they were still rough and wooden and immovable, and her synthetic skin was… a little brittle now, it seemed. How long had she been out?
"Hello?"
A figure appeared in the distance, further away than Penny thought. White and blue and black… coming closer…
Penny struggled slightly, pulling herself from the vines as she looked around, visual sensors now operating at full capacity even with the low light- she couldn't turn on night mode, but…
She grimaced, feeling something shifting with her as she moved. The thing in her back was still there, still plugged in. It wasn't passing data, it wasn't doing anything but supplying a trickle of power, so it couldn't have been any kind of mechanical charger… just what was she tangled in?
Penny looked around and…
Oh.
It hadn't been a pile of rubble after all. The thing that she had been sitting in was a throne . A throne of vines and thorns, of twisted tendrils that curled around her sleeping form in a way that was… almost like a caress. A heart shaped throne of black and cruel spikes, and yet the place where Penny sat was entirely free of said obstructions.
She stared, keenly aware of the long, sinuous tube that glowed with wavelike motions, dots of red flowing from somewhere inside the throne along the floor and up to her back.
Oh.
So that's what it was…
She looked up slightly, taking in the massive rose set above the thorn- dwarfing it in size and filling the air with specks of… something. In the low light, she almost thought she could make out something in the center, but… she couldn't tell. No wonder the building felt so warm, so familiar, so… safe.
Even with the spikes, the pulsing sacs of grimm material, the horrific nature of everything around her…
Penny felt safe.
She turned, watching as the figure in blue and white came closer- the sound of footsteps echoing through the halls.
"Friend Weiss?" Penny blinked in surprise, not at all having expected to see her teammate instead of a soldier.
"Penny! Shit! You're awake! Oh gods I'm so glad your here- things went crazy after you and Ruby vanished!" Weiss cried out, dashing closer and almost tackling Penny with a hug- her outfit had changed, it seemed, and her hair had grown out slightly again, only to be awkwardly chopped short into some rough approximation of what it was before. "Are you okay!?"
"I am… at very low power, admittedly," Penny answered softly, smiling ever so slightly as she hugged Weiss with a single arm, her other still sparking faintly as it sent error messages to her core. "A-and I am still damaged from the fight with the Wyvern. "What did I miss…? How… how long have I been asleep? And… where is Ruby? How did you find us? Were you talking to someone earlier?"
Weiss winced, shaking her head. "It's pretty hard to miss a giant fairytale evil castle springing up in the ruins of Mountain Glenn, Penny. Honestly, I thought it'd be easier to find you and Ruby, but the layout of this place is kind of insane… I was talking to your dad, actually. I only just found you like five minutes ago, funny enough."
She paused, then took a breath, wincing slightly and grimacing as her hug around Penny tightened from her sudden change in emotion. "As for… how long you've been asleep and what you've missed… well… it's been three weeks. Beacon got really damaged because Cinder fought her stepsisters- turns out they were spies for that Salem lady, who knew? Um… she won, but it was close. The Tournament got canceled because one of the other Haven teams tried to sabotage the colosseum to fall on Vale after the Wyvern got disintegrated but thank the gods it didn't work… and um…"
Weiss took a step back, then sighed as she pulled her scroll from her pocket, lighting it up and frowning as she activated the flashlight and shined it up at the crystalline rose above the throne of thorns that Penny had been cradled within.
"Well… as for Ruby…"
Penny looked up slightly, following the line of Weiss' flashlight and gasping as she saw through the gleaming rose and to the figure entombed within, arms crossed over her chest as though she were a corpse in a casket, a single one of Floating Array's swords held against her chest as if it were a lifeline.
"Ruby…"
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder