-Penny, there was an accident and Jenny was transported to a hospital in critical condition.-

There was a complete silence in the room after A.I.C.A. informed Penny of the news. She stayed unmoving for a few moments, not knowing what to do and wracked by fear. Critical condition was bad, she could go into a comma or even die. She had to do something about it. But what?

-Magic. Get the AI to gather the best recovery items from every game and put them on the monitors. I need to go get a Neuralyzer from the Men in Black dimension. Also, get me a visual of the inside of the hospital and a map to where Jenny is.-

Without wasting time, Penny put Men in Black 2 on a screen and fast forwarded the movie to the first appearance of a Neuralyzer, then she dimension traveled into the movie, after casting selective invisibility, and stole the agent’s device and protective sunglasses, after which she immediately returned to the DTR. What followed were a couple of quick teleports to games with recovery items, the taking of said items and then returning back to the DTR. After the last teleport, Penny looked at the image on a monitor, which showed the inside of the hospital and teleported there while still invisible. She followed the route shown on her AR/VR glasses to the operating room, where she found Jenny, surrounded by a team of surgeons and connected to medical equipment. She took her glasses of and put the pair from the agent, then she programmed the Neuralyzer to erase one hour, then she made herself visible and flashed the device at everyone in the room.

-The patient had open fractures on the legs from the impact with the car. You stopped the bleeding, set the bones and the patient is expected to make a full recovery.-

After she erased their memory and put that suggestion there, Penny took out a bottle with healing potion and a box of micro bots and put the bots into the potion, then commanded them to find every injury on Jenny’s body and release the potion there. These were the same micro bots she used to distribute the growth and shrinking liquid she had previously used. Now they were going to work as carriers for the potion to precisely target Jenny’s injuries and heal her. Everywhere but her legs, where she left almost unnoticeable scars, before covering them with a cast. Then she left the rest to the doctors and teleported back to her lab.

Jenny would be alright. She would wake up from the surgery and remember the crash, but would think she fainted from the shock and pain, then the doctors would tell her that her legs were broken and she was not in any danger. She would take a few weeks to heal, Penny left the micro bots so she could induce the symptoms of healing and the periodic itching, then when her cast was removed she would be healthy as can be. But not everything was well. Jenny could have died and there would have been nothing Penny could do.

-What exactly happened? What kind of accident was it?-

-Jenny was going home from work on her scooter, wearing all the safety equipment you provided, when she was hit by a car going over the speed limit. If Jenny wasn’t wearing the equipment, I predict she would have died on the spot. The entire accident was caught on camera, so when I was checking on her, like I periodically do, I saw her being driven to the hospital and checked the recording from her glasses and the camera and then notified you.-

-What happened to the driver of the car?-

-He crashed the car one intersection later and was found dead on arrival. I would suggest deleting or modifying the recording to hide her extensive injuries. Since there would be no need for trial and you took care of the other witnesses.-

-I still need to find the paramedics who found her and neuralyze them. Search the hospital records for Jenny’s file and modify it, then find the paramedics and give me their coordinates. May also need to modify the data from their call to dispatch. Can you also trace who called 911 and listen to what he has said? I don’t want to have to search for everyone who witnessed the incident and neuralyze them.-

It was late in the day, but Penny continued to teleport all over the place and flashing anyone who witnessed how severe Jenny’s injuries were and modifying their memories. The medical file and 911 call were thankfully easier to fix and she was able to finish covering up before midnight. When she went to bed, Penny was both physically and mentally tired after the day she had, so as soon as her head touched the pillow she was asleep.

The next morning was difficult for Penny, as she had no desire to do anything. The worst case scenarios were still going through her head and that didn’t give her any peace. She could visit a psychologist and deal with these feelings like a rational normal person, but like always, she wasn’t normal, so she didn’t do that. Instead of coming to terms with the fact she can’t do anything about it, she decided to do something about it.

The next half a day was spent reworking the design of the scooter and safety equipment as well as coming up with a new design for a backpack, but that last one wasn’t going according to plan. No matter what she thought of it wasn’t visually appealing and she had to start all over again. Somewhere around noon, Penny stopped trying to force it and instead went to the zoo to relax and possibly come up with something new.

She walked around, admiring the animals and reading about them, when she saw something cute. A koala was climbing a tree. She visited the chimpanzees after that and then visited the sloths. She had her new ideas for a new backpack and now she just had to design it and then go dimension hopping to get the materials. What, did you think she was just going to make a simple stitched backpack? No? Good, then you are learning.

When she got back to the lab, Penny made the designs for a chimpanzee, sloth and a koala backpacks, which were also robot pets, and then downloaded the movie she had to visit to acquire the new materials for their construction, Transformers: Age of Extinction. Did I mention she also made a design for a exoskeleton suit similar to Iron Man’s? No? My bad. Penny also made a design for what the scooter, safety gear and backpack would transform and combine into to protect their wearer when they are in danger. And now all she needed was a little transformation metal to finish her project and never fear for Jenny’s and the other core staff’s safety ever again.

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She activated her smart watch and changed her clothes to her mission suit, made sure her multi tools were charged, had extra micro bots under her control, had her infiltration AI ready and cast selective invisibility on herself before dimension traveled to the part of the movie they were explaining how they learned to program the metal.

Penny moved around and studied what the scientist around her were working on. She remembered how most of the machines they programmed turned out like they wanted, but the one they wanted to lead them and look like Optimus Prime instead looked like Megatron, because he was secretly reprograming it with some microscopic mechanical insects or something. So, she inserted her infiltration AI and copied all their methods of controlling and programing the metal and then let loose her micro bots to hunt and destroy all technology small enough to qualify as an insect. She didn’t need Megatron finding his way to her dimension and so she got to working on purging his code from everything around her. She first had her AIs comb through the code to see if any of it was compromised, then went through it herself to double check. Then she purged any programming from the transforming metal until it didn’t have a form anymore and threw every scrap of it into her pocket dimension. Here it was a metal element, but Penny expected when she brought it to her dimension it would turn into an alloy and she would be able to make more of it once she studied its composition.

Once she was back home, Penny took a chunk of metal out of the pocket dimension and left it to the AIs to study its composition, while she started studying the methods used to control the metal and the different programs used to render its forms. She substituted some of them with better ones she had access to, optimized the code used and generally made improvements where it was possible. She was done with the code late at night and decided to go to sleep and continue working on it tomorrow, after visiting Jenny at the hospital. It would look very bad if her girlfriend didn’t visit her once she was transferred to the general ward and allowed to see visitors.

The next day as soon as visiting hours started, Penny was in Jenny’s room with a fruit basket in hand. The fruits were of course from a farming game, so they were without any pesticides or anything other bad for the health and tasted fantastic. Also a bouquet of flowers from the gift shop.

-Hey beautiful, how are you feeling? You sure look good, so you should be feeling good too, right?-

-Penny, you are so silly sometimes. I was in a car accident, so I shouldn’t be feeling good. I should be bruised and battered all over and have all kind of aches. The doctors say I shouldn’t have suffered only broken legs and that I was lucky. The thing is, I remember the crash and it felt like more than just broken legs, but when I woke up it was like nothing had happened.-

-It is probably the painkillers they have you on. That is why you don’t feel the bruises. That and the safety equipment you were wearing probably prevented some damage and saved your life.-

-You are probably right. How are things on your end? You look a little tired to be honest.-

-As soon as I heard about your accident yesterday, I have been working on improving the safety equipment to prevent something like that happening again. I am this close to making sure you never suffer another injury due to an accident, while wearing safety equipment.-

-I am sure it will be something amazing, like all your other works. I feel a little tired, so I will take a little nap.-

-I will see myself out. Have a pleasant dream, Jenny. And I will make sure to keep you safe.-

After visiting Jenny, Penny got back to the lab and read the analysis of the metal the AIs wrote. The metal was an alloy as she suspected and consisted of several rare earth metals and some more common elements. All in all, it was possible for her to synthesize more of it herself, instead of continuing to steal it from the movie. For now she took out the rest of the metal from the pocket dimension and told the AIs to find games that mined the elements needed for the production. Studying the control method for the metal, she found it to be a number of precisely programmed electromagnetic waves emitted from microscopic transmitters around the metal. Unlike the movie, the metal didn’t have levitating or anti-gravity properties and didn’t deform like pixels reorienting themselves. It was more like smiting metal, but without heating it and applying external pressure. The metal reformed itself.

To completely control the form of the metal, Penny combined it with micro bots that were small enough to be categorized at the cutting edge of what was possible for everyone else. Sure they were bigger than what she could make in secret, but for public use it was just the right amount of innovative and hard to make. And once it was put in production, who wouldn’t want to have their own Transformer?

For now, Penny finished making the micro bots and all other components for the exoskeleton, then included some parts for the robot backpack and hover scooter and started to program the metal to take the forms of the scooter, backpack and safety equipment and then started programming the transformation into the exoskeleton suit. It took her many revisions to the code, construction of the micro bots and help from the AIs to calculate possible solutions until she had a working prototype. During the next week, visiting Jenny, going to flight school and working to improve the design was all she did. Well, that and a signal boosting device with remote hacking capabilities. For now, the transformation was still too slow to protect the wearer from something not needing seconds to arrive to them. But she would fix it. Even now the AIs were finishing simulations that increased the transformation speeds with every new iteration.

Around the end of the week, Penny was finally able to shorten the time of transformation from one mode to the other to 0.5 seconds. With the inclusion of an AI to monitor the surroundings and cameras on the backpack and safety equipment, she deemed it quick enough to save the user from harm. She would continue working on shortening the time, but for now it was ready for practical testing and implementation. And while the AIs did that, Penny started fabricating the remote hacking device and miniature drones that would carry and install them. But what were they made for? They were made to be put on every traffic sign for speed limit, stop signs and intersection warning signs and would hack the computer of every car not following them and forcefully making them obey. She cast selective invisibility on every device and drone and send them to do their work on every sign inside the city and if that was a success, maybe even every sign in the country.