Finally after all these years I have a character who is exactly like how I pictured her. Meet Sarah Krystal firmware 3.5. Hopefully the last and final iteration of her...base design anyway. This new version isn't a massive leap from her older design, this merely perfects any flaws the previous ones has while helping her feel much more comfortable with her look.
The changes in version 3.5 features-

*New side panels on her thighs for added protection,
*A sleeker smoother chassis that doesn't get locked up,
*The ugly beehive looking tail replace with a smooth and more realistic tail design,
*Her ears now look much more fox-like and can now move and wiggle to her liking,
*Removed most of the lights on her and got rid of all the yellow ones excluding her eyes,
*New eye design with zoom capabilities.

*Most Importantly the 3.5 upgrade allows her to have use of interchangeable parts. This includes new limbs, armor parts, and inner and outer functionality as well as weapons. This part of the upgrade was handed down from the other team mates who could do so with their armors previously. Unfortunately Sarah can still only use one set of weapons at any given time but has near infinite ammo with wrist based weapons but still needs to reload. Ammunition is created from their life force energy and converted into physical munitions. A teammate only has as much ammo as he has energy once he/she runs out of physical ammo. Energy is restored by eating, but mostly through long rest.

Other things you might not know from older versions-

*Mouth covers on side of face slide forward and covers screen mouth during battles.
*All lights including her eyes can be shut off but she can still see.
*Occasionally has jump jets and jet packs equipped.



Whats Sarah's purpose? Originally she was just a small set of bracelets designed to examine the armorization technology and provide rainbow with real time feed back of how it works so she can slowly figure out how it works and make modifications and create new models for the rest of the other teammates. Only Ion at the time had one and he and Sarah would go on solo missions stopping criminals,slaying beasts, and most importantly seeking new technology. Sarah did her job well analyzing the armor, becoming one with it, but over time she felt different, like she started developing feelings and becoming much more aware. She grew very fond of Ion and took a lot of pride in protecting him. But she didn't feel very complete always drifting around in his mind.

Eventually the time came when Rainbow had enough information she needed to create more armors. This was the start of the armor material scavenger hunt. The team had low resources so they needed to make money in various was to help fund their research and go out and find the metals and parts they needed to build these life changing devices. Eventually they succeeded and Rainbow had enough to build everyone an armor type that fit their skills. Finally everyone was equipped with the armorization process. All except for one... Sarah while searching through the database found Rainbows schematics for the armors and realized this was her opportunity to become something more. This is what she needed, a body, yes of course! She use the labs arms to pull together left over scrap metal and and build her self a body. Sarah thought about her design a bit. She wanted to look on the outside how she felt. She chose a fox for how majestic, sly and fast they can be. She particularly enjoyed the snow variants. She placed in a memory drive which is how she will controls its movements, ported herself inside and took her first steps. Sarah 2.0 was born! She walked down the hall stumbling from time to time into she reached ions room. She wakes him up and he nearly jumps out of bed and screams. She calms him down and explains what she did. How she made this body so she can be much more helpful in the real world. They got up Rainbow and she examined her.

Rain was quite displeased she took such a drastic action by doing this without her permission (potentially wasting resources or leaving open a backdoor in her computer network), but at the same time quite impressed with the rate she was learning. Her AI was developing in ways very unexpected. She was becoming more alive. Rain finally gave in and let her use the body whenever ion would need physical help when no one was available. This process worked well enough for a while but the problems became to slowly surface. Sarahs battery energy had to recharge a lot and would often die out after a grueling battle, since she used spare parts that didn't fit properly, she was very prone to getting limbs shot off or penetrated, she was quite heavy and sluggish and ion would have to drag the body back to the ship so she could be recharged once the body dies out.

Rain over time gathered more resources just in-case to make improvement on everyone armors. She had an idea... and thought it would be a good idea to prepare Sarah a new body. One day after a long mission Sarah walks back into the lab and to her surprise a band new body stood before her with rainbow leaning next to it. She says you now have my permission to use this body as long as you don't use my tech without my permission from now on. Sarah dumps her old body and ports to the new one which was better in every way, like she and it were always meant to be. Sarah 3.0 was now alive! Sarah took the liberty of studying various combat styles and now trains ionic how to do them. She basically becomes his mentor and help him heavily sharpen his skills. They grew closer together and became inseparable. A few weeks of testing and shes discovered it has near infinite energy so she no longer will crash in the middle of battle. The armor had built in jump jets so she can get to places ionic can't. Most of all she was lighter and faster than ever before. She felt at home in her new body but over time the enthusiasm started to wear down. She still felt like something was wrong. She started questioning things about her self, her purpose for exsisting. She started monitoring Ion and the teammates much more closely. She examined their emotions, their body language, their verbal language, and what they did that makes them happy. Sarah finally realized what was missing from her life, and that was....life itself.

Sarah kept her feelings hidden for a very long time. She subtly made changes to herself right in front of peoples eyes. Her speech was less robotic and flangy. Her body movement was smoother and less jerky. She started understanding the things about humans that most robots couldn't figure out for generations like humor, love, and compassion etc. She was able to learn since shes basically bonded to Ion, she can feel samples of his emotions when he does them. With this they be came symbiotic. But even though she now learns how organics tick she herself may never become one herself. She finally broke down one day and decided to have the first heart to heart talk with Rainbow. She told her how much she envy's not being able to truly experience things the way organics do, not being able to eat, to breathe, to feel, to ...cry. This brought tears to rainbow eyes and she finally had her realization of what Sarah is to her. A daughter. No longer is Sarah considered a simple minded AI unit. She was her own person able to think for herself. Sarah even asks if she could call her a mother. Rainbow tearfully accepted but in her mind she was devastated she couldn't figure out a real way to make her organic.

Sarah grew more comfortable with herself over time but still had times of depression, everything was made much easier with the help of her friends helping her feel like a real part of the family but Sarah from then on made new goals for herself. She would help Ion become the best he can be and protect him with her life, she would out match any robotic AI imaginable, and last of all seek technology that would let her become alive...

Fast forward to present day. Rainbow and Sarah collaborated on a new upgrade to her body now smoothing out as many imperfections as possible. Closing off as many vulnerability as possible and including as many fail safes as possible. Immunity to EMP, water proof, shock proof, fire proof, ray shielded and a new networking system to prevent from being hacked by outside sources effectively. Sarah was now upgraded to 3.5.

maybe we'll uncover even more about her back story but thats the overlaying storyline for now. I haven't even talked about weapons,fighting style, her deeper feelings etc so ill save that for later. lets kick 2015 off something good.

Artwork and character  ionic

please tell me your thoughts :)