Penny Greene

Appearance
Penny is a slender young woman with white skin, and a pale, freckly complexion. She has green eyes, and medium length red hair, which she usually keeps pinned with a bobby pin on the left side. She’s about 5’5”, and is usually dressed casually, typically wearing jeans or a skirt with a tee shirt and cardigan.

Powers
None. Penny is a completely average human.

Talents

 * community organizing
 * singing
 * cooking/baking
 * management (particularly planning, organization, and delegation)

Interests

 * singing
 * cooking/baking
 * reading
 * writing
 * politics
 * environmentalism
 * activism and advocacy
 * community building

History
When Penny was four, she was removed from her mother, Amanda Greene, a young single mother who struggled with poverty and addiction. Reunification was attempted multiple times, and her mother worked hard to do what she needed to do to provide a stable home for Penny. Sadly, addiction is hard, and community resources were strained. She never managed to stay sober, and after the one-two punch of a relapse and eviction, the system lost track of her. Penny last spoke to her when she was 12.

By this point, she had a number of emotional difficulties from the trauma of her early life. That, paired with the fact that she was an older child, meant that she was never adopted. She spent the rest of her childhood in various foster homes, some good and some not.

When she was seventeen, Penny was placed with an older woman, Bernie, who ended up being a very good influence on her. She took Penny to volunteer with her, which gave her a sense of purpose and meaning. She wholeheartedly threw herself into these causes, eventually getting her Associates degree in nonprofit management. It has been the main focus of her life ever since.

When she was 23, she happened to meet both Dr. Horrible, who she knew as Billy, and Captain Hammer. Penny wasn’t generally a fan of superheroes, holding the opinion that they didn’t tackle any of the issues that actually matter, but after Captain Hammer rescued her and began getting involved with her volunteering projects, she started to reconsider. At the same time, Billy, who she knew from the laundromat, started becoming better friends with her as well, and she tried to encourage him to see things in a less pessimistic way.

After a few weeks, even though Penny was starting to have some doubts about Captain Hammer, she was overjoyed when she found he’d used his clout to get the mayor to approve the opening of a new homeless shelter, something she’d been working on for months, without much traction. However, during the opening ceremony, when Captain Hammer shared some of his true opinions, she became disgusted and began to leave- just in time for a supervillain, Dr. Horrible, to show up, and for her to realize that he was her friend Billy.

A fight ensued, which resulted in an explosion that embedded shrapnel in Penny’s chest. She quickly went into shock, and died.