Penny Polendina

Penny is a character in RWBY who was introduced in the episode The Stray, when she was found lying on the ground after Weiss crashed into her, chasing after Sun Wukong.

Appearance
Penny has short, rather curly orange hair that comes down to her chin, with a pink bow on the back of her head. She also has bright green eyes, light skin and freckles. She wears an old-fashioned blouse with short feminine overalls, as well as a black and green collar with a matching pair of stockings.

The green lines on the side of her stockings also appear to glow at times. She has what appears to be a small and thin backpack, though it has only been seen when she came to the aid of Ruby in Episode 16. Otherwise, she is not seen to have this backpack; only her normal clothing is shown.

Personality
Penny speaks robotically, behaves erratically, and is overly active in general. All her actions and emotional states are rather extreme and overacted. When Ruby unintentionally made an unconditional offer of friendship, Penny seemed both immensely pleased and somewhat surprised.

She also seems to place great value on friendship, as she was greatly angered at the sight of Ruby getting knocked down by Roman's flare. Furthermore, Penny seems to be immensely curious, as she asked Ruby numerous questions during their walk, all being related to Blake and friendship.

Powers and Abilities
As seen in Black and White, Penny is able to control numerous swords, kept in what appears to be a small mechanical backpack, with simple movements from her hands. She is able to manipulate every sword simultaneously without any difficulty at all, and can fire energy blasts when she brings them together, with the swords going into a special blaster-like configuration. This blast of energy is powerful enough to simultaneously slice multiple Bullheads in half.

She can also use thin strings attached to the hilts of her swords to anchor herself or pull down an airship, despite the mass and thrust power of the vehicle. Such feats seems to indicate enhanced strength as well as the ability to anchor herself in some other way than her weapons' grappling mode.

The swords are able to fold in half lengthwise for easier storage. Her controlled movement of her swords is possibly linked to magnetism, telekinesis, or could be a unique effect of the weapons themselves. Penny's 'strings' seem to be quite strong and durable, as they were able to pull down a Bullhead easily.

Penny is also able to jump great distances, with the force of her jump being enough to break the ground. This suggests that she may be abnormally heavy for her size. She also seems to have a high amount of speed, as seen when she appears in one spot before quickly showing up in another. She also appears in front of Team RWBY out of the blue, after they left. She also inexplicably appears behind Weiss, Yang and Ruby two days later.

Trivia

 * In her debut episode, when Ruby tells Penny that she is her friend, Penny exclaims, "We can paint our nails, and try on clothes, and talk about cute boys!" which is a callback to Weiss' sarcastic rebuttal of Ruby's friendship in The Shining Beacon, Pt.2. Ruby acknowledges this.
 * Penny is apparently very perceptive, as she saw through Blake's disguise and recognized that she was a Faunus while most people did not.
 * Despite being prevalent in more than one episode, Penny's last name and whether she has one is unknown. Abnormally, her last name does not appear in the credits, nor does it appear on Monty Oum's official Facebook image galleries, as it does for the majority of other characters.
 * Penny's outfit and mannerisms seems to reference both the fairy tale character Pinocchio and science fiction cyborgs or robots in general.
 * Her fighting style and physical capabilities also support this with what appears to be a storage hatch on her back and the ability to "puppeteer" her swords using some kind of string or thread.