[Opening song--"pure gold" by half alive.]

Right after the birthday party, there was the expedition.

Penny and Kip's former team weren't all joining them. This area was not known for large amounts of Grimm, and they thought Penny would easily handle anything they found, and Mercury's presence would be insurance.

[Lol]

Mercury had been working with different people as kind of an extra insurance for the last month or so, and all anyone knew, outside of his team and the small group of heroes, was that he'd been removed from Emerald's. The popular rumor was that Raven had felt his skill would benefit from more diverse assignments since he worked well as backup.

They didn't question it.

Penny had heard from Ruby that there might be more to it, and from Yang that Emerald had dumped Mercury, and she understood enough to see that Mercury was too unhappy for it to be really just a change of assignment based on utility.

But she didn't ask him about it. She'd learned some tact over the years.

Kip, on the other hand, had not yet quite learned that people don't like questions like that and made the mistake of asking him why he wasn't still working with Emerald.

Mercury didn't really answer the question. "None of your d--- business, robo-boy," he said instead.

Kip didn't really take offense to the robo-boy because Penny was a robot and she was awesome. But he knew Mercury was being rude.

He backed off right away.

"Well, Mercury, have you met our other teammates?" Penny asked.

"The anti-social ones?" Mercury said.

This time Penny didn't register it as insulting; she didn't see that term as really a negative, just a fact.

"They can be," she said.

The teammates gave her a look, but they were more used to her by now and didn't say anything about it.

"They're all Mistralians," Penny went on cheerfully. "I heard your old team were Atlesians, aside from Emerald, so I'm sure they were very regimented, but we're not really. These are actually triplets."

The triplets were one set of identical ones, save for their height--one being a bit shorter and thinner and then one who didn't look like a twin but was obviously their brother.

Mercury didn't think he'd be able to keep them straight--and didn't really care.

"Athos and Porthos Steel." Penny pointed to the ones who were identical. "And the other one is Aramis."

He nodded.

As usual Mistral names all had a certain sound to them. Shine had once said it was like Greek or Latin, whatever those were.

"And Darren Fields is the last one, no relation," Penny said.

Though they were always hanging out, so you really couldn't tell the differences.

Darren was also the most friendly out of them and nodded with a smile.

Mercury didn't return it.

[Some people may know this, but as the story isn't very popular, I'm guessing most won't know the names of the three musketeers, and Darren is my shortening D'Artagnan  (pronounced "Dar-tan-ion") because that just didn't sound like a real name for RWBY. He's the guy who joins the Musketeers. He's not in the Disney Mickey mouse version, so very few people even know that anymore. Last name is a reference to D'Artagnan being from a farm originally.]

"You all know Mercury Black, I'm sure," Penny said.

"Yeah, he was Sustrai's partner," Darren said at once.

Mercury scowled at him.

"Well, let's get a move on, shall we?" Penny ignored it.

Penny was flying the ship--she could.

The whole thing should only take one day, since they had exact coordinates...not that anyone was that sure about this.

"So your friend Oscar just told you to check this area," Athos said skeptically, when they were close to the valley, "and we're doing it? Even though nothing's been here for years."

"Oscar is usually right," Kip said.

The three brothers and Darren gave him weird looks.

Then they shrugged. If it was an easy mission and they still got paid, why should they care?

"So, Kip, right?" Porthos said. "Is that really your name?"

"Well, my real name is Katevaino Kanap," Kip said sheepishly, because by now he knew people thought it was a weird name.

[Reminder, Katevaino means "descent" in Greek, and Kanap means "wings" in Hebrew. Name basically means "descending wings" as a reflection to the story of Icarus, his mythical inspiration, all come up with by my sister.]

"That's a name?" Aramis said.

"Aramis is so much better?" Mercury muttered.

"My dad just started calling me Kip for short," Kip said. "It's like if you put the first and last letters of my full name together with the 'i' in the middle."

[Which is funny because I counted, and the "i" is almost the exact middle of his full name if you count all the letters.]

"He's right, you know," Penny commented. "And we're going to land soon."

"I hate the landing part." Porthos apparently had Jaune's problem with motion sickness.

"What about you? Do you have a nickname?" Darren asked Mercury. "Mercury is kind of a mouthful."

Mercury just shrugged sullenly.

"Emerald calls him 'Merc'," Kip offered.

"Don't call me that," Mercury said.

"Merc, huh?" Aramis ignored him. "Well, that's easier to say, but it sounds kind of like a candy bar brand."

"Yeah, one with marshmallows maybe," Athos agreed.

"Or maybe a brand of shoe," Porthos said.

"Shoes, yeah, like running shoes," Aramis echoed. 

"He does run pretty fast." Kip didn't seem to understand that they were making fun of it.

Not that they really meant any harm, but Mercury was always very easily offended, and they were grating on his nerves, and it hadn't even been an hour yet--the valley was also pretty close to Argus.

"It's Mercury or Black," he said testily. "That's it."

"Tacking the or in the middle there seems a little awkward," Darren said. "Tell you what? We'll call you 'Boot' instead because you were working with the Atlas Military snobs before, and you've got those metal feet."

[Boot, if you don't know, is a pretty bad military insult--at least if I can believe Youtubers. I guess the idea is like you're fresh out of the boot camp, so you're a scrub.]

"Call me that again and I'll break your jaw," Mercury said.

"Talk about hostility," Athos said.

"I did hear he's a bit hostile," Porthos muttered in a not very good whisper.

"Why'd they stick him with us then? We're like the most laid back team in Mistral," Aramis whispered then.

"To be fair," Darren said, "you all have been laid back since birth, literally, and I've known you almost that long, so it's not surprising we'd get along. Maybe they think we're in a rut. Too much familiarity can be bad. New blood is helpful."

"I thought our new blood was Polendina and Kanap," Athos said.

"Well, they don't have much new blood. They're mostly mechanical. New oil, maybe," Darren said.

They snickered.

This was pretty much indicative of how their talks usually went.

[And I 100% am like this with old friends and my siblings, and I think most of us can relate.]

Mercury already disliked all of them pretty much equally and disliked Kip for not seeming to mind it.

Kip didn't pay them much attention. He was checking his equipment to make sure all the dust and Grimm scanning stuff was charged and calibrated.

Penny landed the ship not that long after that.

"Unfortunately, I couldn't land exactly where Oscar said to look." She held her hand up like she was saying "combat ready." "I can fly over there myself with Kip, and you guys can search the ground. Between a bird's eye view and a...well, lizard, I'm sure we'll find something. You take one scanner, and we'll take the other."

"Uh, Captain," Aramis said. Penny was the team captain, though it was pretty loose authority in this case. "You don't think it could be a little incautious to split up that way? I mean, we don't know for sure they're no Grimm, and we have no idea what to look for. This area has been traveled plenty of times."

"True...but often people don't go very deep in the valley," Penny said.

"Because it's really hard to climb out of it," Porthos said.

"Well, never fear, I can always just pick you up and fly you out," Penny said.

They perked up a little.

"I guess it's okay," Aramis said. "How do you use the scanner again?"

"This switch will turn it on, and if this light starts blinking and you hear a buzzing sound, that means dust is at least within 500 feet." Kip pointed. "That's the short range one. We'll take the long range one because we'll be flying. And the Grimm one will start beeping if there's a Grimm, but you have to stick close. If it was loud, the Grimm would hear it, so you need to be close enough for you all to hear it."

"Hey, is it true your mom actually invented this stuff?" Darren asked him.

"It...would be more accurate to say she modified it," Kip said carefully. "We've had these tools a long time, but my mother can make almost any tool more effective. She's...a genius."

"But she lives in Vacuo, right? Which is kind of funny. They're not usually that technologically advanced over there." Athos said what was commonly believed about Vacuo by Mistralians.

It was not entirely true--but it was true of most of the Vacutians they met. In all fairness, the huntsmen graduates tended to be more fighters than thinkers.

"Yes," Kip said.

Kip was by now old enough, at least for a huntsman, for him not living with his mom to not raise any suspicions.

"Why did you decide to move to Argus?" Darren didn't ask this like it was weird, just curious.

"Oh...well, I wanted to work in Argus." Kip didn't usually explain. 

"Oh." They shrugged it off.

"So...Boot, where are you from?" Darren asked.

Mercury ignored him completely. He wasn't answering to that.

The team DAPA (as they used to be called, like dapper) didn't know how to read him.

They started to comb over the valley.

They got deeper into it, but the bottom was still far below them.

[To give you an idea what Depression Valley might look like, think Death Valley California, the lowest point in the world, only greener, because Mistral is not a desert. The image below is Badwater Basin, the bottom of Death Valley.]

For huntsmen, it wasn't as hard to climb over it. They could jump like stags over hills, but their Aura got tired of this, and even though it was late fall, the sun in the valley was almost hot over their thick coats.

Mercury gave up thinking of looking for dust and just numbly kept walking. He didn't get the best traction in his metal boots here.

He thought of one of the songs off the DJs' playlist that they made everyone listen to all the time ("made" was a strong word for it, but he was not in a good mood).

https://youtu.be/9sf7J8wXXa8

"We were born in the valley
Of the dead and the wicked
That our father's father found
And where we laid him down
We were born in the shadow
Of the crimes of our fathers
Blood was our inheritance
No, we did not ask for this
Will you lead me?
We were young when we heard you call
Our names in the silence
Like a fire in the dark
Like a sword upon our hearts
We came down to the water
And we begged for forgiveness
Shadows lurking close behind
We were fleeing for our lives
Will you lead me?"

Oscar would probably have said the lyrics had "symbolic meaning"--he was always on about that when he and Emerald would talk over the scroll. Mercury always tried not to listen.

How appropriate, though: "Blood was our inheritance." "Shadow of our fathers." "We did not ask for this."

Yeah, that all tracked.

Worst of the DJs' songs was when they made too much sense.

Mercury supposed that was why they always sang them.

Why the heck was he thinking about this?

Well, he had nothing else to do. This was so boring.

Kip circled overhead and flew down. "Penny and I have gone over the latitude and longitude and so far no dust," he said. "There's just a small lake there."

The lake was a ways away from where the walkers were looking.

"Maybe the dust is in the lake," Porthos joked. 

This was a joke because everyone knew that dust could not survive water--it would erode it away too fast. Except for ice dust, but that would just freeze the water, so they'd have known if it was there.

That was also why there was no such thing as "water dust".

Mercury only knew this from listening to Weiss go on about it to Emerald on one of her visits when Emerald had admitted not understanding this fact herself.

A street education wasn't exactly the best way to learn technical stuff.

Weiss really did love to lecture people about dust. So did Whitley.

Thinking of this didn't make Mercury feel any better. 

"Could be under the lake," Aramis joked next.

Kip tilted his head. "I'm not sure how well these instruments work through water...so if it is, we'd not know. But maybe Penny would know."

He flew back to Penny.

Then they radioed the others to come to the lake straight away.

That took longer than they'd have liked, and finally Penny came and flew them there instead.

"Kip and I have discussed it," she said, "and one of those devices lets you drive it into the ground to search for dust.... Only we didn't think we'd need it. It's a little old fashioned--scanners are easier. But suppose I go to the bottom of the lake and drive it in to test your theory, Aramis."

"I was kidding. You don't really think dust is under this lake?" Aramis said skeptically.

"Well...it is where Oscar said to look," Penny said. "'On the other side,' he said. And what could be more the other side than the bottom of the lake is from the top?"

"That didn't make any sense," Porthos said.

"Penny--" Mercury was tired and grumpy by now--more so than before. "It's not gonna be there. Oscar was clearly wrong about this. Which is as much as I'd expect from asking a farmer where to look for dust. We should just go back to Argus."

"We came all this way. We should at least try everything," Penny said. "Besides, it won't take me very long. I'm waterproof, don't worry."

She took the device. "And this is too, I hope."

"It should be. Mother usually waterproofs all her devices in case of a flash flood," Kip mused. "Or a toilet flood.... Those are...worse."

"I'd say so," Darren gagged.

Penny took the drill-scanner and plunged underwater promptly.

The three brothers splashed water on their faces.

"Might as well eat lunch while we wait," Athos said, taking out their meal rations.

Mercury sighed and leaned on a rock, bored.

"My mother is certainly prepared," Kip muttered to himself, watching the water. "But then, she always was."

Mercury looked at him.

"Hey, Fly Boy," he said, "doesn't it weird you out to use your mother's inventions?"

"Hmm?" Kip was startled Mercury was speaking to him at all. "Oh...I guess it's odd sometimes to think about it, but they're harmless."

"Really? Even though she was a crazy woman who did stuff to people that they're probably never going to forget, you're just fine with relying on her?" Mercury was sour.

Kip considered that point.

"You mean I should blame her for what she did before because she's still like that deep down?" he asked tentatively.

"Isn't she?" Mercury said.

Kip rubbed his head. "I've only visited her once since I moved.... She...well, she's...still the same person. But I guess, to me, Mother was never just a scientist. She was my mother."

Pause while Mercury tried to process that.

"So you're saying finding out what kind of monster she could be didn't change your view of her?" 

"It made me afraid of her." Kip was not yet used to people finding this odd to talk about, and he had no shame. "And I think I was afraid of her for a long time, though she wasn't cruel to me. But she tried so hard to keep me away from the world, I think she's...afraid of it, really. I realize that she was wrong about the world's dangers, and she didn't want me to be hurt. And then she used me to help her hurt other people because of that. I was sorry for it. But now I'm sorry for her too. I think it's sad that she missed out on meeting people and making friends because of that."

"And she stole your life," Mercury said. "Turned you into a freak." He nodded at his metal body parts. "And I bet she's never apologized."

"Not...not for all of it," Kip said. "But, now that I don't have to live with her anymore, I don't mind so much. I think we're just different people. And she's...happy now, I guess. And I'm happy. I don't think I need to agree with her for her to still be my mother."

"Don't you think she'd still keep you on a leash if she could?" Mercury said.

"Maybe," Kip said. "But she can't."

Pause.

Kip began to suspect that Mercury was asking this for a reason. "Are you angry about my mom?"

"Not your mom," Mercury sniffed. "Just thinking of stuff, that's all. I just don't see how anyone could let someone like her off the hook just because they were their mother. She only saw you as her possession, not a person."

Mercury didn't think of how damaging that would be to say to someone.

Kip took it surprisingly well.

"Aunt Vara has said that too," he said. "But Uncle Theo told me that he thinks my mother became that way because she couldn't save my father and because no one ever stopped her. He thinks that he should have helped her instead of encouraging her. Maybe people treat others like that when they're afraid and when they're alone. My father and my mother were so close once.... I...I don't know if she's ever really stopped being upset about him. I don't remember him very well, but I know he was a good father."

"Can't relate," Mercury muttered bitterly.

Kip didn't understand that either, so he took no notice of it.

"Do you think I should be angry at her?" He was puzzled. "But she's not even your mother."

"I wouldn't just let her off the hook." 

"Yes...I see. But...what would I accomplish by being angry?"

"Huh?" Mercury looked up.

"I can't punish her," Kip said. "I can't change her mind either. If I was to yell at her and try to make her feel bad, it wouldn't make me feel any better. I notice that when people act like that, they just feel guilty. Penny doesn't understand guilt very well. She says that it's a human feeling. But I think I've seen animals act guilty too...cats...sometimes." [Usually it's dogs though.] He rubbed his head. "But it's not like it changes it. They just do the same thing later. On the other hand, not acting angry anymore to my mother and not feeling guilty about it, I just went on and did what I wanted. And I feel fine. Maybe I wouldn't want to live with her now, but I don't mind her being all right either. I mean, it would be pretty bad to want something bad to happen to my mother. She did take care of me all those years."

Mercury flinched visibly a bit at that.

"Whatever," he said. "You're a weirdo, Kip."

He turned and walked farther off.

"I wonder why he was asking me that," Kip said.

"Strange guy, isn't he?" Darren commented, looking up. "You know, I heard a rumor that he was really kicked off his team, not just reassigned. I could believe it. He doesn't seem very teamwork oriented. Do you know, Kippers?"

"Just Kip, actually." Kip never did grasp that the mistake might be on purpose. "And I don't think I should gossip about it. Or talk s---, is what Vara calls it."

"Vara...is that that really hot woman who works at Shade Academy?" Athos said.

"She does work at Shade." Kip didn't know why everyone kept saying the "hot" part.

Well, Vara could literally be hot when she used fire or stood in the sun too long.

"Crap! You know her?" Porthos was impressed.

"She's kind of my aunt, unofficially," Kip said.

"Dude, that's so awesome. Is she, like, really cool?"

"She's...very...dynamic." Kip used the word Penny used to describe Vara.

Which was Penny's nice way of saying "unhinged".

"I bet she is," Porthos said. "Wow, Headmaster Rhodes is so lucky. The hot ones are always taken."

Now, the three brothers and Darren were adults, naturally, but they had to be no more than 25 at most, so it was unlikely Vara would have been in their league, but that didn't stop them from wishing, apparently.

* * *

Penny combed the bottom of the lake for a good spot to drill in for a few minutes.

She saw some interesting fish. 

The valley must once have had more ocean in it if it had fish.

She had search beams in her eyes, sort of, so the darkness didn't bother her.

Then she found a nice, clear spot without rocks covering it too much.

She stuck the drill in. It was battery-powered, so no need to plug it into something. That was why it was waterproofed.

Victoria Kanap really did think of everything when she invented. Pietro would have been impressed.

Penny sighed mentally.

She still missed him. She didn't think she experienced grief the way humans did, not as a heaviness inside her or something that would make her cry--she couldn't cry.

But her mind would turn to her father and what he'd say or do, often, and she'd wish she could ask him. Just accessing her memory files of him didn't have the same effect. She thought that was her human soul part.

In a way you could say he was a part of her in that it was his soul in her that made her alive.

Yet her personality wasn't just like his, and this puzzled her. Somehow being part robot made her different.

Penny was puzzled by many human things. She had a foot in both worlds. Some machines puzzled her by not having feelings the way humans did. She'd almost expect one to speak to her. 

She found most humans didn't understand her if she said this. Kip did.

Kip kind of had similar feelings. He'd grown up with machines more than humans, and was part machine also, though his mind was certainly human. But also being so literal, he lacked the social awareness of other humans, and he better understood what it was like to be someone like Penny.

Penny thought she'd been less what her friends called "lonely" since meeting him.

Still, being a full robot did have its perks when she needed to do things like be underwater and not need to breathe or worry about pressure.

The drill went in farther--and then it lit up.

Penny almost swallowed water in her urge to scream in excitement the way Ruby would.

But that would not have been good to get inside her gears, and she checked herself just in time.

The last thing she wanted was to have to visit Watts or Victoria and get tuned up. She didn't like either of them.

[Can't blame her.]

She burst out of the water and flew down to the boys.

"There's dust under the lake!" she announced. "Oscar was right!... There's a lot of it too, see?"

She showed them the readings.

"I...don't really know what those numbers mean," Athos said.

Kip studied them.

"That's...probably enough dust to cover half the bottom of the lake," he said. "How is it possible?"

"My estimate of the bottom of the lake indicated that it's probably all one big, solid, clay-like mass," Penny said importantly. "I bet there're some hollowed out areas underneath and the dust is stuck there. Completely sealed off from the water."

"How would you get it out then. I think if water hits it, it'll erode some of it," Porthos said.

"Well...water wouldn't disperse it all right away..." Aramis said. "Slowly, yeah, but it would take days and days for it to totally break down. I bet it could be dug out of that if someone had a...g=. Gee...you'd almost need a submarine."

"Good luck getting one of those out here," Mercury said. [Could just tunnel through the dirt to under the lake too, Merc.]

This seemed like a small problem to the others at the moment.

"If there's really that much dust there," Darren said, "we could be set up for months. Commander Schnee is going to love this."

"I can't wait to tell her," Penny said.

* * *

In fact, Winter was thrilled--though for her that came off as mildly glad.

"It will take some time to move the right equipment out there to dig it up," she said. "But I'm sure now that we can prove there is dust, the drilling companies will be happy to loan us their tools."

The suppliers had been...chary, to say the least, about letting the SDC rent any of their tools even in advance, with their finances being what they were.

She straightway started organizing a follow up mission to start digging it up.

It would take weeks or so to get the tools to Argus though.

Team DAPA was so pleased by their success--though they'd had little to do with it--that they invited the other three to join them for a drink.

Which, as none of them could legally drink, was kind of funny. DAPA didn't seem to notice the problem there.

Not that Mercury would really have cared, but he'd be in more trouble with the base if he was caught illegally drinking. He had another year to wait for that.

Penny didn't eat or drink anyway, but she accepted the gesture of camaraderie.

"Boy, those machines make it so we barely have to work anymore," Athos said cheerfully. "Must be nice to be able to invent that stuff."

"The only thing I ever invented was excuses," Porthos joked.

"And you're not even that good at those," Aramis jibed.

"At least he makes excuses. What's yours?" Darren jabbed at him.

[I can just see them literally fencing in my mind.]

Mercury ignored them.

"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself," Penny observed to him. "I know it's not the same when you can't eat or drink, but the gesture itself was nice enough to cheer you up, I'd think."

"Penny, you're a robot. I don't know if you really get it," Mercury said.

Penny stared at him.

Something like hurt registered on her expression.

"It's true I am a robot," she said flatly, and for any other girl that would have been a bad sign.

Mercury suspected it might be for Penny too.

Penny wasn't ever combative outside of the Grimm and wasn't going to push him further.

"Did that offend you?" Mercury asked outright.

"Yes." Penny had no lies.  "I mean, no." 

Then she hiccuped.

Okay, she had some lies. Just no believability.

https://youtu.be/NAZk6GJEN_c

["Monster" AMV by Christian Werewolf.]

"Why?" Mercury asked.

"Nevermind," Penny said.

"No, just tell me. Why? You don't like being a robot?" Mercury had never given it a thought that Penny would care.

"In my experience," Penny said, rather coolly for her, "if people say that, they mean that you are not understanding something that they think is obvious, to humans. Or that you can't. Maybe that's true. But I don't know if I like to believe that I'm different all the time. It's not my fault I'm a robot. I wish people would just tell me what I'm missing instead of making me feel like I should already know."

[Every socially awkward person agreed.]

"Huh, you know, that's the first thing you've said I could actually relate to," Mercury grumbled. "People don't tell you--as clearly as they should."

"On the other hand, I suppose it's tiresome to have to explain something that usually you would not need to explain," Penny flip flopped. "Perhaps I understand why they don't. There are times I'd rather not explain how circuitry works."

"Right..." Mercury frowned. "Well, for future reference, this is my 'I don't want to talk to anyone' face."

"It looks like your normal face," Penny said with a straight face of her own.

"Exactly," Mercury said.

"Is that a joke?" Penny was confused.

"No, it means I don't like talking to people."

"But people are so fascinating. Unlike machines, they are not predictable," Penny argued.

"They're predictably jerks, idiots, and worse," Mercury said.

"And better," Penny added.

"Mostly worse," Mercury said.

"What a strange way to look at it," Penny said. "I don't quite like it either. Are you usually so pessimistic?"

"Hey, Penny, tell me something," Mercury suddenly changed the subject. "You know Emerald tricked Pyrrha into tearing you up that one time, right?"

Silence.

"Yes..." Penny said slowly, like even she knew it was weird to bring this up out of nowhere.

"But you're okay with it? You see Emerald around here all the time, never say a word to her. Or Pyrrha."

"But...they're sorry," Penny said blankly. "And Pyrrha didn't even mean to do it.... It was a bit odd at first, but I couldn't really blame her. And in the long run, it's not like it did any lasting damage. I was okay.... I...well, I don't really die like humans, you know. I just shut down. I was fixable. Though it seems humans are more fixable than we thought."

"And you don't think...that it was going too far?" Mercury said.

"Do you think that? I thought Emerald was your friend," Penny said.

"She is...was.... Well, we're different. We're both killers, so we're not ones to judge each other--or we weren't," Mercury said.

Suddenly it occurred to him, really, that you could argue the same thing for his dad and him, but he still judged his dad for it.

But his dad and Emerald were way different people. And also Mercury wouldn't have been an assassin if not for his dad, so...

"I'm confused about why that would matter. She is my friend also," Penny said. "And she apologized to me for it."

Mercury hadn't been there for that, but it had happened.

"But that doesn't change it," he said.

"But nothing would change it now," Penny said. "So why worry about it?"

She sounded like Kip.

"And it doesn't make you mad that your dad might have lived longer if he hadn't had to bring you back to life again?" Mercury was hell bent on bringing this taboo stuff up apparently.

Penny frowned. "I guess if I went as far as to blame them for it. But if anything it was Salem's fault, and she's gone. I know Emerald never intended that to happen that way. Humans are changeable. I envy them a little for it. I think I will never really change measurably, but you all can. You fascinate me. It sounds to me like you're the one who's bothered by it, not me."

"It does kind of bother me," Mercury said, "how easily people brush off the horrible things people do like they don't matter."

"Perhaps you're looking at it wrong," Penny suggested. "Perhaps the good things just matter more than the horrible ones."

"What if there were no good things?" Mercury said. "What if someone just made you the way you were and then tried to kill you for it? And that's all there was to it. Nothing good, nothing nice...just blood."

Penny assumed he was not talking about her anymore.

"I can't imagine that," she said.

"That's why you don't get it," Mercury said.

"I see.... Because I can't imagine there being no good and nothing nice," Penny said. "I'm not sure I'd want to be able to imagine that. Maybe being different is okay."

Mercury didn't know what he could say to that. Penny was too untouched by bitterness for him to be understood by her, if he even had wanted to be.

He wondered what it would be like to not be capable of thinking people were all bad. Would she always be that way? Or could even her optimism be crushed by experience?

That would be a statement on the world if it could break even a robot's cheer.

Penny wasn't inclined to be worried about it apparently.

[The "gold" in the title was pretty clearly symbolic, and I think you could take it different ways. Gold represents value when it's used in symbolism, but also greed sometimes. Depends.

For Penny and Kip, I'd say "gold" is their attitude toward the world and the people in it. People who have a hard time being part of the human experience tend to value it more than those who are steeped in it but never taught to appreciate it.]