Part 1
the next day, penny is seen at her desk near crow’s. she’s filling out paperwork. crow has his legs up on his desk.
penny seems discomforted by his lack of professionalism, but continues working.
soon, she finishes her work, gets up, and plops a large stack of papers onto crows desk.
he flinches slightly, surprised, but his face doesn’t show it.
crow: “done already?”
penny: “every report has been corrected, documented, categorized, consolidated-“
crow: “okay okay. I’ll look over them, thank you.”
penny salutes and asks for more work.
crow is a little tired of her energy so early in the morning, but is softening up to it. he doesn’t fault her for being enthusiastic. he tells her she can relax. he expected her to take much longer with this task.
she insists on doing more work.
crow sighs, and playfully gives her an “order” to learn to relax.
penny extremely formally and uptightly accepts, then makes a show of going back to her desk, unbuttoning her uniform slightly, and then kicking back in her chair, putting her legs on the desk. she smiles a little smugly while her eyes look in crows direction.
crow’s face remains tired, but he is surprised to see the quick shift in behavior. he is also somewhat flustered.
he plays it off, “haha very funny,” and continues looking through the stack of documents.
her smile fades.
Part 2
penny and misha are sitting together in the break room. misha is telling her about the new psychology thing he’s learning about: “narcissism.” penny looks visibly uncomfortable but continue to sip her coffee and listen.
jane walks in and notices penny’s discomfort, and interrupts misha, asking if his book says anything about incognizance. misha has no idea what she’s talking about.
penny relaxes a bit, and jane takes this moment to ask penny to help her with her work.
Part 3
penny and crow are at their desks and working on paperwork. penny mentions it would have been nice to go with misha and jane on their mission.
crow reminds her shes on probation. soon, just not yet.
penny returns to her work. her face pensive.
crow continues scribbling at his paperwork when he’s again interrupted by penny, asking about the mission details.
crow tells her she can help jane with the full report when she comes back.
penny is visibly excited but returns to professionalism, giving him a “yes sir”.
crow adds that she has to finish her current work first.
penny looks at her work, its all complete, and she has been sketching for a while. showing a nearly complete portrait of crow.
she simply gives him another “yes sir.”
Part 4
jane and penny are sitting together at jane’s desk. theyre chatting and filling out paperwork together.
jane lightheartedly asks penny is she expected to do so much paperwork as a ranger.
penny says she knew what she was getting into, and paperwork is easy. all of it helps people, so shes happy to do it.
jane is surprised by the levelheadedness. penny admits she is itching to see some action.
jane says she’s excited to see her in action, too.
there is a silence for a while, jane breaks it, asking penny how she’s feeling so far. she mentions crow is a bit rough around the edges but he probably cares more than anyone else here.
penny is intrigued, saying she initially had high expectations of him but has been starting to think he’s not what the magazines say he is.
jane laughs about the mention of the magazines, claiming she hasn’t thought about those in a while.
Part 5
crow and penny are once again sitting at their desks. crow is mid conversation with penny about how things used to be at the outpost. reminiscent of a time when he was more boots on the ground, less managerial. lamenting his current status
penny is surprised, thinking that raising up would be the goal. crow deflects, saying that it just wasn’t what he wanted.
this doesn’t make sense to penny. crow seems to want to drop the conversation and starts to read over some documents.
penny doesn’t push, instead asking about the locket on his neck. wondering what’s inside?
he removes the locket and throws it to her, telling her to see for herself.
she catches it and opens it up. a pretty, light haired girl is shown.
penny thinks to herself that he must have a girlfriend or something. of course he would.
crow continues reading and thinks to himself, curious about the contents, too. he’s never looked inside. but it doesn’t really matter.
Part 6
jane and misha return from a particularly rough mission. jane is exhausted, misha is somewhat tired, but seems okay
penny asks about the mission, hiding her excitement, retaining her professionalism
jane tries to explain but misha interrupts, seemingly wanting jane to relax. misha says they relocated chupacabras safely, but one of them seemed to have a crush on jane (a joke)
jane laughs it off, and tells penny she can’t wait for her probation to end, so that she doesn’t have to do these anymore.
crow tells jane shes in luck, penny’s last day of probation is tomorrow. it will be her first mission. and crow will be supervising.
Backstory Time: Penny – Part 2
For her 9th birthday, she asked for books on the animals that lived on Lagopagos. Instead, she received extra lessons for piano, which she had been struggling with. This deeply upset her and she chose to rebel. She opted to spend more time with classmates and less time studying. Her next report card was sent to their mailbox. She came home from school to see her father embracing her sobbing mother. Her mother could barely speak, choking out half words between the sounds of her father comforting her.
Penny is in shock, having no idea what is going on or what to do. Her father sees her standing stiff and yells at her. How could she do this to her mother? To him? Does she hate them? Penny tried to apologize, it was just one report card. They didn’t care. The yelling continued, Penny cried, never having experienced this side of them before. They made her feel guilty for crying, it was her fault to begin with. She apologized and apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again. She loves them and is so sorry.
From then on, she put all of her effort into her studies, extracurricular activities, and private lessons, no matter what damage it caused to her relationships.
Penny would win many awards and go on to have the highest grades of her classes until she was 13. She never would hear any praise or get any validation for who she was as a person. The only kind words she got were from the results she produced.