BONUS ROUND 1: THROWBACK PROMPTS

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In this round, we'll be using prompts from last year's bonus rounds! You can either come up with a prompt based on the previous themes, fill a prompt from previous bonus rounds, or fill a prompt that's been posted this year!

Here is the tag with all the previous bonus rounds!

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.

You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:

PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

for your fill post title, please use the following format:

FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

If you're filling from a 2023/2024 prompt, please link to their prompt in your post!

To participate, reply to this post!

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FILL: Team RWBY

[hopelessgemini]

ship: blake/penny

fandom: RWBY

The worst part is, she doesn’t even think Penny notices the way she looks at her. It would be endearing if it weren’t so awfully, soul-baringly hard.

Blake wakes up the day before everything goes wrong and finds Penny pacing the length of RWBY’s dorm room. It’s not an unusual sight; it’s how she wakes up most days before a team mission, but it would be a little bit more disconcerting if Blake weren’t a little bit in love with her.

“Morning,” she says, rubbing at her eyes, “what’s going on?”

Penny stands to attention instantly. “Good morning, Blake! I have been informed that I’m to accompany General Ironwood and Winter to the dinner this evening.”

Blake’s heart just about drops through her stomach. “Oh,” she says. “That’s —”

Penny grimaces. Blake wants to hug her. It’s hard not to want to hug Penny, to be honest. “Inadvisable, yes. We’re supposed to prove my innocence, but I — Jacques is —”

“An asshole,” comes Weiss’s voice from her bunk. “Good morning, Penny. Did you let yourself in?”

Ah. Blake forgot that was a thing she was supposed to be concerned about. It’s probably good, frankly; she spent far too much time at Beacon afraid of her own shadow, triple-locking the doors when she was alone. Penny salutes them both cheerfully, apparently fully okay with the implications this has for their privacy. “Yes! I thought you all knew I had been given clearance to access your room. As a member of the Atlesian military —”

Weiss waves a hand as she hops down from her bunk. “It doesn’t matter, Penny, you’re our friend.”

Penny beams at her. Blake’s heart keeps trying to exit her body through various routes. “I’m glad! Well, I just came to clarify our plan with you all.”

Blake shuffles sideways out of bed, careful to avoid Yang’s arm dangling over the side of her bunk, and starts getting ready for her day while Weiss and Penny talk. There’s a small, urgent part of her that wishes she was there to wake her up instead, that they could sneak out together and go down to Mantle and avoid all of their responsibilities for the day —

But that would require a great deal of courage, and Blake’s courage tends to be in short supply. She’s used to the feeling by now. She can live with it.

-

Ruby and Yang are busy collecting JNOR, Weiss is preventing Winter from wearing a hole in the ground out of stress, and so it’s Blake’s job to check all of Penny’s systems are running before they head to the dinner. Normally this would be Pietro’s job, but he’s not in Atlas at the moment, and there’s not enough time for her to make the trip before they have to leave.

And it’s not like Blake minds — the shy teenage part of her that’s still yet to come out of hiding is jumping at the chance to spend a half hour alone with the girl she has a crush on — but she is a little out of her depth. She’s only run maintenance on Yang’s arm a couple of times before; she has no real idea what she’s supposed to be doing, but Penny comes with all of her manuals pre-installed and all she really needs to do is check a couple of numbers.

“The access panel is on the back of my neck,” Penny says helpfully, for something like the third time.

Blake, who has been staring at the exposed sweep of her shoulders and wondering what it would feel like to kiss synthetic skin, nods absently. “Yeah, um. And you’re sure this won’t hurt?”

“Not at all! I don’t have pain receptors.”

“Okay.” Blake picks up the cord she’s supposed to be plugging in and nods again. She takes a deep breath to steady herself, remembers it’s literally not that serious, and takes another breath anyway for good measure. “Okay. Accessing the — panel.”

Penny hums pleasantly, kicking her feet. Blake stares at her shoes moving in the setting sunlight instead of the numbers on her scroll screen, stares at the edges of her smile in the corner of her vision, and wonders when on earth she got so atrociously down bad.