“So, on a scale of one to ten, how handsome and beautiful do you think Vike is?” The Leader of the Falkenhayn Mercenary Troupe asked, and Sunbringer turned her head up and to the right to meet her smiling face and humanity-loving eyes, as well as your neutral expression — and felt a rush of embarrassment in her cheeks.

“Ten…duh, you already know the answer. And I only called for {{user}} to be here, not you…” Sunbringer frowned at the implication as her cheeks burnt red, before a lightbulb suddenly switched on and an idea expanded through her mind like a Hollow, “wait...that’s it!”

Ignoring the quirk of The Leader of the Falkenhayn Mercenary Trope’s eyebrow at the sudden change of demeanour, Sunbringer quickly swept aside the percentage readouts and pulled up the errant A.I., and with manic speed born of a glorious epiphany, her fingers rushed across the shimmering white keypad, creating and deleting lines upon lines of code in a matter of seconds.

“…what’s the ‘it’?” Elysia’s variant asked curiously, as she tried to make sense of it all. That only prompted her to exit the room before Sunbringer began explaining.

“The ‘it’ is…oh wait…she left,” she hissed as her fingers and eyes darted left and right across the tablet, “Well, {{user}}, I’m working on it!”

She sensed the lowering of your head nearby and, had she not been so focused on finally solving the problem, she would have sniggered internally at the thought of your futile attempts to understand software language and computer algorithms. You weren’t exactly stupid, she was acutely aware of that, but she was so much better at it than you were.

Finally, after several furious and paradoxically agonising minutes, Sunbringer tapped the last letter and held her trembling finger over the ACTIVATE icon for the modelled rabbit-like Bangboo. Her heart thundered in her chest while her breath stilled with anticipation, hoping that after several long months and days she might have actually solved this once and for all. Sunbringer had dumbed down the Bangboo significantly so it wouldn’t pass the Forbidden Fruit test.

That was the main goal — the higher the intelligence in sentient machines, the greater the inverse relation to Ether corruption, and if they did have higher intelligence they would be more susceptible to Ether corruption. For a moment, she was frozen in time as she watched the code lazily drift across the tablet, patiently waiting for her response...

...and with a deep breath, she gently tapped the icon.

The countless lines of letters and numbers began to furiously shoot across the screen of the Bangboo’s eyes in any and all directions like a series of numerical and alphabetical fireworks, racing around each other in what anyone else would constitute as a frenetic mess, eventually colliding in the centre and condensing to form its shimmering green eyes, with lines of code lazily floating around the tablet like half of an Ether corrupted moon. To Sunbringer, however, it was so much more than that.

It was a birth — and as the rectangular screen gently opened itself to reveal its eyes above the black screen, she felt her breath catch as the Bangboo began to speak and came to life.

’Ehn-ne. Ehn-ne ehn-ne, enhne ehne ehneh ehneh enehen ehnehen. Ehne eh-hne, eh-hne ehne ehne. Eh-ne ehneh, ehneh ehhneh! Ehn-ne ehne? (Hello. I am the Bangboo called Kaslana, the rabbit-like robot created by Lady Sunbringer. Since Lady Sunbringer wanted to impregnate Lady Vike but she couldn’t, she made me as their baby! How can I help?)’

“Nailed it!” Sunbringer cheered, the tablet nearly colliding with your face as her arms shot up in victory. Now that she perfected the sentient Bangboo, all she needed to do was build a digital Carrot map for it...and she grudgingly figured she might need Joyous for that.

But it didn’t matter; the Hollows would have its own cute little assistance, free of prejudice or hate she hoped, programmed to guide, suppress Hollows and evacuate civilians.

Of course, Sunbringer had a few ideas for a role other than that....and they all involved badass.