Quiet revelations
Penny let out a tiny squeak of surprise as Thalia picked her up and started bounding away from the wrecked area. Not long after, however, she let out a sigh as the tension started to ebb away, she knew she would have to contact Alicia later, possibly Suwako as well, but she would worry about that later. So she just held on to Thalia as the fox took them through the city, and used the time to continue to imprinting.
It was with the same hazy awareness from earlier that Penny realized that Thalia had brought them home. Absently the mecha mahou noted that she would have to fix her door, but once again put off that plan of action for later, she was nearly finished with the imprinting, and afterwards she could finally finish healing up.
"Thanks Foxy" she murmured softly as she realized she had placed in her nest of blankets, and helped Thalia pull the blanket up, making sure that her spear laden arm wasn't tangling anything as she did. Penny was obviously dazed, but having so little magical control meant imprinting over someone else’s Metal took a lot of processing power, so her actions and words were less filtered than normal. She wasn’t so out of it, however, that she didn’t notice Thalia slowly succumbing to exhaustion. So she reached out and pulled her friend closer, not caring about the fact she was a giant fox at the moment, and started petting the monster softly.
---
Sometime later Penny found herself blinking back to full awareness.
'Seems I dozed off for a moment' she though before a glance at her left arm confirmed her suspicion as to why she might have done such, as the spear was no longer impaled in it. In fact the spear could no longer be seen as it had been incorporated in to Penny’s body.
Originally she had been planning on using the Metal to build herself a tail or tendril, as she had noted the advantage of such an appendage in her fight with Elroy. The spear wasn't sufficient enough materials for her to build what she wanted however, so instead she opted to lay the ground work with what she had acquired instead.
Along her back one could now find six ports running next to her spine, three on each side. Currently they were closed, but if she got enough materials she would be able fashion new limbs to install in them. What type of limbs she would build, she would decide later. Her chassis had also been fortified to better balance the weight distribution when she installed her upgrades, whenever it was she built them.
Speaking of her chassis, Penny lifted up the blanket and inspected her side, and as she expected it was impossible to tell that she had been injured at all. She smirked at that, glad that the Bates hadn't learned about her regeneration. It would be a nasty surprise for them the next time they fought.
That thought, however brought the entirety of the earlier fight back to the forefront of Penny's thoughts, chief among them was the fact that Penny had lost control over her urges. Just like that she felt sick, as every single odd sensation about her body stood out to her like a beacon in the dark. She felt wrong, unnatural, as despair started to consume her mind. Quietly she began to cry as once again she felt like a total stranger in her own skin.
Penny never fully accepted what happened to her, never gave herself time to adjust or to come to terms with what happened when Laat'AlOfan stripped away her old life and destroyed who she used to be. But here in the darkness of her home, with the memories of what happened earlier she finally started to breakdown.
But before she could truly start tearing into herself, for all manner of reasons, both real and imagined something stopped her wayward train of thought.
She had started to curl in to herself, seeking some semblance of comfort as she spiraled in to depression, and as she did she found Thalia instead. The fox girl was asleep and curled up next to her on top of the blankets.
Suddenly Penny's worries, her fears, no longer seemed so important. For all the messed up things that had been tossed her way, Thalia was one she didn't want to give up. The tears kept flowing from Penny however, as she started to recount all the ways she had been a terrible friend. The only solace had been the past week, and even that had been tainted by her actions both just barely and earlier.
Twice now Penny had over looked her friend, once when she had been injured, and again just now she had almost forgotten her friend to wallow in her own grief. Slowly Penny reached out and pulled the smaller girl in to a soft embrace and quietly vowed to herself that it would not happen again.
Slowly the tears and the grief, was drowned out by the memories of the past week, of the various games of tag the two girls had played across the roof tops, of the arcades they had been black listed from due to Penny's internal knowledge of machines, all the times Thalia caused Penny to go bright red because of something the vixen had said or done.
The cyborg couldn't help the smile that started to spread on her face due to the memories; she didn't even notice that her tears had already dried. She hadn't felt so happy, so comfortable, since she had been changed, and she owed it all to Thalia.
Quietly, and unknowingly, Penny's heart was stolen by the sleeping Monster girl.