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 Schnee crashed into her, chasing after Sun Wukong. In Painting the Town... she tells Ruby that she is a robot when saying "most girls are born but I was made".

Appearance
Penny has short, rather curly orange hair that comes down to her chin, and she wears 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 Rose 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. Another small quirk is that Penny hiccups whenever she tells a lie.

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 in Black and White. She also placed trust in Ruby based on the latter promising that she is her friend in A Minor Hiccup. Furthermore, Penny seems to be immensely curious. Upon hearing that Blake had run away, she asked Ruby numerous questions, all being related to Blake and friendship in general. Despite being told not to wander off, she still wanders Vale on her own.

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 rotating 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 seem 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 able to jump great distances, with the force of her jump being enough to break the ground. She also seems to have a high amount of speed or stealthiness, as seen when she appears in one spot before quickly showing up in another. For example, when she appears in front of Team RWBY out of the blue and when she inexplicably appears behind Weiss, Yang Xiao Long and Ruby two days later.

Penny seems to possess immense physical strength, made evident when she managed to bring the From Dust Till Dawn truck in Episode 19 of RWBY to a complete stop with her bare hands, even causing the ground beneath her feet to buckle and crack. Her strength is attributed to her being a robot which she admits to in A Minor Hiccup. In terms of strength, she is even stronger than Yang of Team RWBY, despite the latter showing a higher degree of her strength an episode later.

In the episode Painting the Town... Penny is revealed to be the first synthetic entity to be capable of generating an Aura.

Trivia

 * Penny's outfit and mannerisms seems to reference the fairy tale character Pinocchio. In place of Pinocchio's nose growing when he lies, Penny appears to hiccup when she is lying or just generally nervous. This is further cemented by her line from A Minor Hiccup, "I'm... not a real girl."
 * 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.