Ilona

When not on missions, Ilona basically spends her time snacking, watching shows, and studying computer programming in her dorm room. Old documentaries are her favorite, and she will watch even those with bizarre subjects and strange techniques. They have taught her tons of uncommon and shady knowledge, which occasionally helps her answer some questions that no one knows. The type of snack she enjoys varies greatly, and so she tends to come home with a huge bag of snacks from the supermarket whenever she isn't ordering groceries online. Still, she is very mindful about not dirtying her keyboard, desk, and bedsheet while snacking in her room; after all, if she does, she will have no choice but to go outside and change or clean them.

Team Meerkat's other members are all understanding of Ilona's lifestyle and will discreetly help her out in any way. But when it comes time that she really needs to be dragged outside, they will also use a myriad of methods to prod her. For instance, Ganya will reason things out with her outside her door, Rachel will use her newly formulated mysterious reagent as bait, and Reika will impatiently bang the door and threaten to blow it up if she still refuses to come out! All three methods are highly effective; Ilona always ends up coming out of her room, albeit with extreme reluctance.

If worse comes to worst, they can also get the loudmouthed Dorothy from another dorm as reinforcement. Team Meerkat's members can never convince Ilona to attend barbecue parties or large gatherings, but sometimes, Dorothy can.

Ilona has a really good relationship with the support robot Regi. Although she can be at ease so long as she's in her room, her bedroom doesn't have everything after all. Worried about her health and hygiene, her teammates placed all the food, drinks, computer, reading materials, and so on beyond her room so that she would be forced to exit her safe space multiple times a day.

When Ilona's parents learned about this, they, too, implemented this at home, rendering her weak objection futile. However, having to leave her room to get any and everything consumed too much of Ilona's energy. Determined not to live life this way, she delegated most of this task to the support robot, making it her personal attendant.

Sadly, support robots weren't almighty and tended to have limitations in mobility, such as failing to dodge small obstacles and thus knocking things down at home or in the BCRL dorm. Ilona spent a long time studying indoor features and then upgraded Regi's obstacle-avoidance function herself, slowly turning the robot into a great helper at home.

By the time her teammates planned to knock on Ilona's door upon noticing that it had been ages since she left her room, Regi had already turned from a clumsy robot dog to an awesome in-house helper that could block the door with a paper with a large "Busy!" written on it in its mouth.

It's not exactly impossible to drag Ilona out of her room. After long-term social desensitization practice, she no longer looks like she might burst into tears the moment she's exposed to sunlight, and she can now go on outdoor missions... Regardless, on account of how she'll enter the "power overload" mode as soon as she's outside, it's ultimately better to leave her alone for the most part. Her teammates are well aware of this attribute of hers, so they won't purposely ask that she travel with another teammate and will instead assign her a more suitable task.

Probably due to her hermitic nature, Ilona is always able to rapidly find an apt bunker or even a proper venue for the whole team to gather and rest, even if they're in the middle of Solstice ruins or the chaotic wilderness. After she upgraded Regi, Regi is now also equipped with functions like terrain scanning and ballistic trajectory computation. From this perspective, maybe Ilona could have a fantastic career in robot design too.

However, exceptions are bound to exist. Team Ratel's Dorothy never fails to come up with a way to "dig out" Ilona from all sorts of nooks and crannies. Seeing how the two extreme opposites get together and form an amazingly neutral bond, the captains of both teams can't help but think about the same thing—it feels like a weight off the shoulders all of a sudden.