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Penny smirked as Johnny doubled over and disappeared. She spun back towards Luis and stepped forward, intending to get herself within a close enough range to have full control over her coins, plunge them into his body, and whip them around to start shredding his insides like an industrial blender. She made it only one step closer before a wave of black energy blew past her and slammed Luis and the golden girl up against the wall. Penny let out an excited whoop and glanced over her shoulder to see Lyss, the source of the spell, getting lifted onto the lion and...retreating? 

[color=goldenrod]“What are you doing?”[/color] hollered Penny, unintentionally smearing the blood streaming from her nose across her cheek as she wiped it with the back of her hand. [color=goldenrod]“We have this!”[/color]

They didn’t, but it didn’t matter. A blue mist descended upon the room and by the time it was gone the remaining members of the Dollhouse had vanished. Penny swore, poked her head out of the door, and caught herself against the frame as she started to feel faint. Her head was racked by the most audacious of migraines, a full on orchestral symphony of pangs like the cannon blasts at the end of the 1812 Overture striking right behind her eyes. The coins that were trailing behind her clattered to the ground as she groaned. With the Dollhouse gone she’d intended to go after Kimberly, but the presence of the police forced her to stick with the Coven.

Penny had no clue who the fuck they were, but one of the DENS helped patch up her scratches. The dress would be beyond saving. She had saved the tags too, just in case. When they got back to the hotel the first thing she attempted to do was call Kimberly. The phone rang, and rang, and rang until it hit an automated message informing her that the owner of this number had not set up their voicemail. A loud “FUCK!” could be heard echoing around the corner of where the witches were meeting with the feds. Penny slammed out an angry text that ran the whole rainbow of colorful language, erased most of it, and sent Kimberly this:

[right][quote][b][code]
FUCK YOU
call me
[/code][/b][/quote][/right]
 
She took another minute to finish her cigarette, catch her breath, and cool her head. Then, with a flip of her hair, she walked around the corner looking calm and collected, as if she wasn’t fazed at all by her friend using her and the others as bait. The few eyes that met hers didn’t seem friendly. Could she blame them? Penny was totally in the dark on what Kimberly had been planning, but why would anyone in the Coven believe anything but the opposite? She knew if she was in their spot she wouldn’t be giving herself the benefit of the doubt. She also knew that if she left it’d all but seal the idea in their head that Penny had been a part of the whole grand fuckup, even though she’d been there to prevent a fuckup in the first place. Good job on that, by the way. Penny sighed and lit another cigarette as Emily opened up on her.

"You need to get out of here, we don't want you."

[color=goldenrod]“Noted,”[/color] said Penny cooly as her blue eyes stared down Emily. Her tongue wanted nothing more than to unleash a beatdown on who she was beginning to see as the Coven’s resident asshole. She wanted to call her out for not being there in the room to fight the Dollhouse, to point out that without Penny it’d be very likely that this parking lot meeting would be a lot less crowded. Don’t want her? Those fucking idiots needed her. Her teeth smartly held her tongue down. 

[color=FireBrick]“For all we know she was feeding that bitch information the whole time!”[/color] yelled Maya, pointing an accusatory finger at Penny. Penny scoffed but didn’t get a chance to reply.

[color=f26522]“Hey, Penny wouldn’t do that,”[/color] said Isla.

 Penny smiled at her friend with a hint of sadness. Isla was wrong: Penny had totally been doing just that, although she never thought this would’ve been the outcome of keeping Kimberly in the loop. It just didn’t make sense. She knitted her brow. Kimberly said she wanted a cure for Annabelle. If she wanted to hunt down the Dollhouse, she would’ve just told Penny. Right? Kimberly probably could’ve convinced her it was the right thing to do, and maybe Penny would have convinced Kimberly to not act so rashly. Penny scoffed. It still weirded her out when she was the one being the voice of reason. 

A pained look crossed Penny’s face when the feds showed up and told them that Claudette had died. Son of a bitch, if she’d only reacted quicker she could’ve repulsed the fatal bullet away from the woman. She hardly knew their leader at all, but knowing that she could’ve prevented it hit hard. She hung her head and bit her lip, tightening her hand into a fist as she replayed the moment of Claudette getting hit over and over in her head. Penny noted every single moment where she’d failed to stop it, each one feeling like a knife to the gut. Acting like she was fucking Supergirl was goddamn childish and stupid when people still got killed. An unstoppable force wasn’t so damn impressive when it couldn’t stop the worst from happening. Her shoulders shook.

[color=FireBrick]“We can’t just let them get away with this. We’re not going to get any fucking cures from them, so we might as well just destroy them,”[/color] said Maya. She was right. She was so fucking right. Even though Penny knew getting payback always felt so hollow, they could just call it justice to make themselves sleep better. Penny wiped her face, lifted her hand, and was about to throw in her support.

Then Maya said, [color=FireBrick]“Kimberly too.” [/color]

[color=goldenrod]“[i]Fuck you,[/i]”[/color] said Penny, her voice as a jagged and cold as shattered ice. [color=goldenrod]“Seriously, go fuck yourself. I am angrier at Kimberly than you can ever be, but none of you are touching her, get me?”[/color] She rolled a quarter between her knuckles, her narrowed eyes scanning the Coven and the DENS for challenges. [color=goldenrod]“Things don’t add up. I don’t know what the fuck she was thinking, but she had to have a good reason. And if she doesn’t...”[/color]

Penny shot Maya a withering look full of hate and disgust. [color=goldenrod]“[i]Then I’ll fucking take care of it.[/i] But you? You’re going to do nothing.”[/color] A wicked smile curved on to Penny’s lips. [color=goldenrod]“Nothing seems to be about what you’re good for, anyway, so I don't doubt you'd nail it.”[/color]