Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20140404003915/@comment-3387274-20140416203131

My guess is that the mechanical looking bits of Penny's outfit (which are actually outfit, they overlap her other clothes sometimes) provide an attachment point for the wires on her blades. Also, either her semblance is gravity, or she has dust that does that (no other way for her to remain rooted during the bullhead battle, but still be toppled by Weiss). The laser is clearly a Dust effect built into the blades. So far, none of that requires her to be anything other than human. It is possible she has some form of cyborg enhancement, but it's not really necessary.

As for being set apart, that's just stating what we already know from episodes 15 and 16.