A Sword of Lightning, a Scythe of Roses (RWBY x Boboiboy crossover fanfiction)

(2) 4: Balloons Pop

*SCREEEEEEEEEECH* a truck's wheels desperately try to swerve out of the way but it was too late.

*CRASH*

Ruby's eyes widen as instead of getting run over and feeling a damp pain from her aura shattering, she instead hears what sounds like two cars crashing into each other all while the road seems to crumble all around her. She looks up and sees Penny casually stop a Dust transport vehicle, even denting the car in the process. While a normal huntsman or huntress can do so with just any car, Dust transporters are built with keeping semblance-users in mind so for her to accomplish a feat like this, she'd have to have been made of an even harder material, or have enough aura or a strong enough semblance to be able to tank something like this.

Confused, Ruby softly calls out to Penny who looks back at her in horrific realization before running off.

"Wait! Penny! Come back!" Ruby shouts as she runs off to catch back up with Penny.

Luckily for Ruby, Penny manages to run herself into a corner while trying to find an escape. With that chance, she pleads out, "What is going on?! Why are you running? How did you do that?!"

Penny hides her hands below her armpits as she desperately tries to talk her way out. "I-I can't! Everything's fine! I-I don't want to talk about it!" As she says this, each time she either lied or went into denial, she would hiccup.

She couldn't even look Ruby in the eyes anymore from how scared she was of what Ruby might think of her if she revealed the truth. Yet every person has a breaking point, every lie a need to escape.

"Penny, if you can just tell me what's wrong, I can help you!"

"No... No, no. Y-you wouldn't understand..."

"Let me try! You can trust me!"

And like a cord snapping, she finally relents.

"You're my friend, right? You promise you're my friend?!"

Taken aback by her sudden want to reveal it, Ruby could only quietly reply.

"Of course..."

Mulling over what she should do next, Penny takes a breath before showing her hands. The skin on both was torn but there was no blood. The limbs were slightly mangled but neither of the two hands possessed any cut sinews. Rather, both hands show something peculiar underneath the skin. Metal.

"I'm... not... a real girl..."

"I... I don't get it. Even if you're just a cyborg that doesn't mean-"

"I'm not... a cyborg... What I mean is that... while most girls are born... I was made. I am the world's first synthetic person capable of generating an aura. I'm... not even real..." She turns away shamefully only to hear tapping on a scroll.

She turns her head to Ruby and panics as she shouts, "R-Ruby! I-I thought you said we were friends! Why are you-" Ruby then hands her scroll to Penny to show an image on the phone. It was an image by Boboiboy with the orange-clad young man smiling happily with a yellow orb-like robot and an old man. It seemed to have been taken as a selfie using his watch.

"I... I don't understand..." Penny says while looking confusedly at the picture.

"A while back, I decided to ask what Boboiboy's life was like before he got whisked away into Remn- I mean Vale. In his old home... he... found this little robot guy right here... he called him... Ocho... bot... I think? And he told me that Ochobot was his best friend. Him, a robot who looks even less human than you, is Boboiboy's dearest friend."

She then looks down and smiles melancholically. "Maybe even more so than me..."

Ruby quickly shakes her head so she won't go into a tangent. "A-anyways, what I'm trying to say here is that it's not how you look like, nor what you are..." To further emphasize her point, she then holds Penny's metal hands as a symbolic gesture of her wholely accepting the robotic girl. "It's about who you are that counts. And you Penny, are my friend..."