Chapter Text
"I'm telling you, it should be Bon Bon! It's a super cute name!"
"No way! It's the 26th attempt at making this thing, so Guard No. 26 should be its name!"
"What kind of uptight and stingy name is that? Who would name their child that?"
"It's not a child, it's a robot! That we made! With Dr Burke's guidance! So we gotta name it something cool!"
Burke sighed, lifting his head from his grading as the hostility between his two prized pupils seemed to crackle like electricity. They had been working on groundbreaking research for robotics and as an experiment of their combined research thus far, Burke had asked them to assist him in building a robot whose purpose would serve to protect their research materials.
He thought they'd get into arguments during the construction, maybe during the setup and programming of the robot, but he didn't think they'd fight over something so silly as a name. The penguin-like robot peered at the people in the room wordlessly, still awaiting the response to its name command. It was designed to look school-friendly but it could still do its job no matter how cute it looked.
Tracy shook her head in dismay at his words, crossing her arms. "Everything you just described is basically that it's a child, ya know? What if it wants friends and they have to call it 'Guard No. 26' for the rest of its life!"
"Tracy, it's a robot," Luca deadpanned, running his hand through his dark brown hair in annoyance. "Just 'cause you've got an attachment to your personal project doesn't mean this one has to follow your cute naming sense."
"Alright, kids. That's enough bickering for one day," Burke sighed again, standing up this time. He made his way over to the robot guard and gave it a proper once-over. They followed his design brief and took a few liberties with the inner mechanisms, that much he was aware of. The astounding attention to detail, however, is what made him so proud of these two as the only members of his robotics club. Not that the robotics club wasn't popular, mind you, it was simply that Burke had a... habit of removing persons he believed were not suitable for the club, which was nearly everyone except these two.
Tracy and Luca ceased their arguing with each other in favour of watching their idol and mentor swiftly change a piece of the coding for their controller on Luca's laptop.
The robot let out a mechanical hum before it reiterated its first question: "What is my name?"
"Your name is both Bon Bon and Guard No. 26," Burke replied, and the robot took a moment to process that information before it finished running the course of its code.
The robot spun in place and then rolled up to the two students. "Hello, I am Guard No. 26, also known as 'Bon Bon'. I am a defence protocol robot whose main purpose includes..."
Watching his prized students eagerly note down their successes in their respective research journals as the robot prattled on, their argument long forgotten, Burke exhaled softly, a soft smile on his old features. The future was definitely bright if they had minds as eager and curious as these.