Penny (Pokemon)

Penny
Species	Human
Affiliation	Team Star
Hair color	Red/Blue
Eye color	Orange
Base	Black
Relatives	Father
Voiced by	Unknown (2023)
Debut	Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

Penny is a Pokémon trainer who was featured as a supporting character and opponent in the ninth generation games of the Pokémon series, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Under the alias of Cassiopeia, she was also the founder and leader of Team Star. Her team consists solely of Eeveelutions.

Background

Penny hailed from the Galar region. She was raised by a single father, who was affectionate to the point where Penny found it to be embarrassing and called him annoying. Penny herself was exceptionally skilled at computers and developed advanced hacking skills at a young age. She was also somewhat shy and socially awkward, and she was insecure when it came to trying to befriend others. Penny was also known for her passion for Eevee, as all of her Pokémon were evolutions of the Pokémon, and she always carried around a fluffy Eevee backpack.

She was enrolled in a prestigious academy for Pokémon Trainers in the Paldea region and dormed at the school while attending it. She was part of the school's STEM track and had Classroom 1-D as her homeroom. The school had a serious bullying problem, and Penny was among those suffering from it. She soon discovered a group of friends who were also victims of bullying: Giacomo, Mela, Atticus, Ortega and Eri. She made contact with them over the phone under the alias of Cassiopeia and worked with them in forming Team Star, a group intended to repel bullies. She worked with them in putting everything together and became close friends with them without actually meeting in person. However, Team Star's debut ended up being a distaster. Although they did not engage in any battles, Team Star's show of power had an overwhelming effect on the bullies, which caused them all to drop out of school entirely. This developed into a scandal in which Team Star was held responsible. Cassiopeia contacted Team Star and tried to order them to disband, but they refused. Instead, she made it clear that she would clear their names, but she would also not be able to see them again and bid them farewell. And so, as Penny, she privately confessed the truth to the school's director, Harrington. It was decided that the rest of Team Star would not be punished, and Penny would return home to Galar for eighteen months. This was not intended as a punishment, but as a way to help Penny rest after her ordeal. Publically, it was referred to as an overseas study.

After the eighteen months passed, Penny returned to school around the beginning of Scarlet/Violet. She discovered to her dismay that Team Star was still active, and that its leaders had formed their own bases while refusing to attend school. Outside the academy, she was accosted by a group of Team Star grunts who were forceful about trying to recruit Penny into the team. Florian/Juliana stepped up to fend the grunts off with a Pokémon battle, and Penny came to see them as a skilled trainer. Penny used this knowledge to form her plan to end Team Star, which was known as Operation Starfall. She hacked Florian/Juliana's phone and contacted them as Cassiopeia to make her proposal: Florian/Juliana had defeat each of Team Star's leaders to make them disband. According to the rules that she had helped Team Star to form, this was the only way to get them all to step down. She was hoping to get them all to return to school and put Team Star behind them, as she felt responsible for what had happened.

Throughout the Starfall Street storyline, Penny continued to contact Florian/Juliana as Cassiopeia and provided them with information about the Team Star members and their bases. She did not inform them about her own connection to Team Star until the very end. She also allowed another student named Clive to help out Florian/Juliana, without realizing that he was actually Director Clavell in an obvious disguise. After each Team Star member was defeated, Penny approached Florian/Juliana in person to reward them for their victory, while claiming to be part of Cassiopeia's supply unit. During these encounters, she tended to be knocked over and licked by Kuraidon/Miraidon, much to her embarrassment. She provided Florian/Juliana with TMs and League Points that she had obtained from hacking the Pokémon League's LP management system. After all five of the Team Star leaders were beaten, Cassiopeia revealed herself to be the true founder of Team Star. Once again following the group's rules, Cassiopeia had to be defeated last for Team Star to truly disband. She asked Florian/Juliana to meet them in the schoolyard at night for their battle.

Along the way, Clavell attempted to protect Penny by pretending to be Cassiopeia, but that charade quickly fell apart after Florian/Juliana defeated him in a battle. They confronted the real Cassiopeia in the schoolyard and discovered that Penny was her true identity. She admitted that part of her still wanted Team Star to live on, so she put her all into the battle. She also had Clive record the battle so that the rest of Team Star could see the video and abide by the battle's outcome. After being defeated, Penny thanked Florian/Juliana and Clive for everything. She also explained more about Team Star's code to Clive and admitted that Team Star's leaders were her greatest treasure. It was at that point that Clive revealed his identity and brought out the Team Star leaders to properly meet Penny. She was flabbergasted, both by the reveal and by seeing that the Team Star leaders still wanted to be her friend. Clavell revoked his order to expel Team Star's members, but he still brought up their violations of school rules and sentenced them to community service. However, said community service would consist of converting the Team Star bases into Star Training Centers, which would act as training facilities for students. Penny agreed to this arrangement, but she also told Clavell that she believed she deserved a harsher punishment, as she confessed to how she illegally obtained the League Points through hacking. This resulted in Penny receiving additional community service, as Clavell and Geeta decided to have her to volunteer engineering work for them, and they even offered to let her work for them after graduation. She thanked Florian/Juliana for their help and offered to help them out in return in the future.

In the game's final storyline, The Way Home, Penny was enlisted to help Florian/Juliana, Arven and Nemona to explore Area Zero due to skills with technology. This came into play early on, as she used her hacking skills to activate the Zero Gate. Though she felt she was not fit for adventuring, she accompanied the group in their journey and also bonded with them despite her social anxiety. She also fought alongside Florian/Juliana twice during their exploration, first against a Scream Tail or Iron Bundle and then against a Brute Bonnett or Iron Hands. She stayed behind with Nemona at one point to hold off a group of Paradox Pokémon, but they entered the Zero Lab in time to witness the final battles. She was unable to take part due to everyone's Poké Balls being locked by the Paradise Protection Protocol. After the crisis was resolved, the trainers returned to the school together, where Clavell both congratulated and admonished them. Penny was soon dragged off by Geeta to help in fixing flaws with the League Point system.

During the postgame, Penny could be found around the academy in a series of scenes where she tried watching over Team Star members to make sure they were fitting in well around the school. In the last scene, she showed her dorm room to Florian/Juliana and reflected on how far her friends had come while feeling that she still had room for growth herself. She admitted that she had come to see Florian/Juliana and the rest of the Area Zero group (even including Koraidon/Miraidon) as important friends. Penny could also appear as an opponent in the Academy Ace Tournament.

Pokémon Roster

• Umbreon
• Vaporeon
• Jolteon
• Flareon
• Leafeon
• Sylveon: She will Terastalize her Sylveon in battle with a Fairy Tera Type.

In Other Pokémon Games

In Pokémon Masters EX, Penny and her Sylveon appeared as a playable sync pair that could be recruited at random through the game's Sync Pair Scout feature during random time periods starting in November 2023. She was featured in the Story Event "Veevee on Pasio!", where she had recently arrived on Pasio and was having trouble engaging with a gathering of Eevee fans due to her social anxiety. Hugh and Bianca briefly mistook her for a suspicious Pokémon thief, and they proceeded to help Penny to engage others in conversation. As tiring as Penny found Hugh's energy to be, the lessons ultimately helped her to talk with others including Nate and Rosa. She and Hugh then saved a stolen Eevee from a pair of Team Break thieves. Penny decided to let them off with a warning, as she had learned that revenge was not the answer. She talked about her past with Hugh and Biana, and it turned out that Penny and Hugh were each ready to hold the other back if they went too far against their opponents. The event ended with Penny reluctantly being dragged into a battle by Nemona. Penny also appeared in the Story Event "Let's Go in Search of Wonder", where she helped Elaine and Eve in their search for a talking Eevee by taking them to a secret meeting of Eevee fans.

Trivia

• Her Japanese name is Botan, named after a Japanese word for the tree peony. Her English name seems to be a play on 'peony' itself (after the DLC for Sword and Shield had characters named Peony and Peonia). The name 'Cassiopeia' (which is used in all languages) is simply named after a constellation, which ties into Team Star's namesake.
• Her father's nickname fo her is "Pen-pen".
• Penny's student ID for the academy is 803B121.
• She affectionately refers to Eevee and its evolutions as 'Veevees'.
• She is notable in that while she is technically a villainous team leader, she is not portrayed as a villain or antagonist, and rather she is depicted as wanting to disband her team from the beginning, rather than other examples in which antagonists have changes of hearts and disband their teams only at the end of their stories.
• Her dorm room is shown to be cluttered with empty boxes from online orders. She also had magazines featuring images of Nintendo systems such as the Gamecube and what appears to be a manga of a Magikarp-themed hero.
• After the final storyline, she mentions that she was planning to binge a bunch of anime.