"…Fuuka?"
Pallid fingers halted in their movements across the keyboard, hands stilling above her laptop as the blue-haired girl turned in her seat to peer over the back of the couch. "…Aigis?" she questioned with slight curiosity, giving a few owlish blinks. "Is something wrong?" Fuuka inquired further of the robotic girl.
"Yes," the blonde replied shortly, though she fell silent afterwards.
"…what is it?" asked Fuuka, setting her laptop to the side so she could turn and get a better look at her friend. Was she hurt? Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but Fuuka supposed maybe she was hiding it out of embarrassment. Or maybe she was having a moral dilemma that she needed advice with, or had a question regarding a particular human mannerism.
"…Can you fix me?" queried Aigis after a moment, sounding almost unsure as to if that was the question she was supposed to be asking. So she was broken, then?
The technologically-inclined teenager took up the task of scrutinizing Aigis' limbs and torso for any "injuries" she had sustained. But, she came away with nothing, which only served to further her curiosity and her concern. "Um…" Fuuka wasn't really sure how to ask the question without sounding skeptical of any problem Aigis had, but eventually swallowed it and prodded, "Fix what, exactly, Aigis?"
The anti-Shadow mechanism shifted with a few quiet whirring noises. "…my neck. It…hurts." Again she sounded somewhat indecisive about her response; justified, as said response provoked a mixed reaction from Fuuka. First and foremost wondering if Aigis could hurt (well, Fuuka assumed so, or at the very least that she could "feel" some kind of discomfort), and following that wondering what on earth she could have done to throw off her neck so early in the morning. The thought flitted briefly across her mind that maybe the other girl had slept oddly the night previous, but this idea was discarded immediately for a number of reasons, mostly because muscles couldn't get stiff if you didn't have any.
"Hm…I don't know if I can fix it, but if you come over here, I can take a look," said the blunette eventually, setting her laptop on the coffee table in front of her and patting the unoccupied area of the couch. The blonde seemed hesitant at first, but after a few moments' consideration circled around and sat on the sofa next to Fuuka.
"…I apologize for any inconvenience," Aigis stated, her eyes flickering towards the floor. "But of SEES, you are the best with machines, and I thought perhaps you could help."
The cooking-impaired teen saw Aigis' logic in such a thought; the only other person she could think of that could help on short notice would be maybe Mitsuru, and even that seemed kind of like a stretch. Admittedly Fuuka was better with computers and programming than robotics, but she knew enough to put parts together, so if the problem was mechanical then she should be able to do something about it.
"It's okay!" chimed Fuuka with a smile. "I wasn't doing much else anyways." Just internet-surfing while everyone else was out or asleep. "Um, could you turn around so I can look at your neck plating…?"
"Oh!" Aigis seemed embarrassed at not realizing the necessity of that, and quickly turned away from Fuuka and brought her knees up onto the couch, tucking her legs in underneath her. Fuuka shifted to this sitting position as well so that the awkward robot's back was facing her. Nimble hands darted up to brush the fluffy blonde hair out of the way, and pale fingertips brushed gently over the casing around her friend's neck, giving a gentle poke here and there to see if the plating was damaged. When the high school junior was satisfied that nothing was out of order, she then looked around to see if there was some kind of release to remove the outer casing, to look at the mechanics inside.
"…hm," mused the technophile quietly, a slight frown touching her lips. "Hold on a moment, I'll be right back." She then slid herself off the couch to stand before disappearing around the corner into the hallway leading out of the first floor of the dormitory. Aigis was left sitting silently on the couch, and for a while she just kept her seat obediently, staring straight ahead at the sitting area across the room. But then curiosity began to creep in and the anti-Shadow weapon found herself turning her head slightly to take a wondering peek at the screen of the other girl's laptop. She didn't look very long (Aigis didn't want to be excessively nosy, after all), just long enough to see something about someone with the alias "Jin" before she averted her gaze.
Eventually, the quiet blunette returned, lugging a toolbox with both hands over to the coffee table. "Goodness, this thing is heavy…!" she remarked, setting the box down on the polished surface with a prominent "thunk". "I'll have to undo the screws and look inside you," Fuuka explained, the double entendre just barely alighting in her thought process, but taking off faster than she could realize what it was. "Um…if you don't mind, I mean," the girl quickly added as she popped the toolbox open.
Aigis regarded this request with mild bemusement before nodding. "That is okay." She, again, seemed to wonder exactly about her own confirmation, as if her speech was a separate thing from what she really meant.
The web-surfer plucked a narrow-headed screwdriver from one of the compartments of the box, giving it a good once-over before making a decisive "ah" and returning to her spot on the sofa. "This might, um…tickle? It might tickle a little." If Aigis could feel a "tickle" anyways…
The walking weapon said nothing, which Fuuka took as permission to proceed. It took her a moment to gather up her courage, but eventually she began to crank away at the screws that kept Aigis' neck plates securely to her body. She undid them one by one, and as she started on the last remaining screw, her friend finally spoke up. "…I have never been awake for this before," she stated slowly.
Fuuka stared at the tufts of golden blonde in front of her, confusion taking over her features. "Awake for someone fixing you?" questioned the blunette with an almost skeptical tone of voice.
"No," Aigis responded, an awkward silence following as she tried to think of how to word the next part. "…I am always wearing my neck casing. If it was ever taken off for repair, I was powered down."
The internet-dweller had a hard time understanding the significance of this, but eventually breathed a realizing "oh". "Don't worry, I'll be gentle." If no one had ever worked on her spinal mechanics while she was animate, then the parts inside were probably rather sensitive -- actually, thought Fuuka, not so different from humans, -- and possibly more fragile. She would have to practice extra care.
Fuuka warily set the parts of the shell and the screwdriver aside on the coffee table, letting herself take in the appearance of all the little gears and cables that were normally hidden away. Everything was stationary at the moment, so she couldn't see right off the bat what was wrong. "Aigis, could you turn your head to the right?" requested the shy Persona-user, keeping keen eyes on the mechanisms as Aigis followed this direction. "Now to the left?" The robot did so. "Bow your head." She was starting to see something that was a little off. "Tilt back." Her friend did so and Fuuka's hands twitched away to keep from being bumped into. "Okay, that's good…" The mass of sandy locks in front of her returned to a ninety degree angle. "Okay, I'm going to start now…tell me if anything hurts, alright?"
"Okay," Aigis responded. After a moment's hesitation, Fuuka went in, slender fingertips probing the little metal parts and conscientiously nudging warm-to-the-touch cables aside so as to see every tiny doodad and whatchamacallit. It didn't take her long to find the guilty party; there were a pair of misaligned gears that clanked and squeaked, refusing to turn against each other when Aigis moved certain ways. This in turn threw off a few other connective apparatuses and just generally made upper spinal motion uncomfortable.
"I found it!" announced the computer-loving teen with a triumphant smile. "It'll take me just a second to fix, okay?" It was a pretty simple dilemma, so it should be a simple repair too. She just had to realign and tighten the delinquent gears so they didn't come loose and pop out of place again.
Hands withdrew and reached for her skinny-headed screwdriver and a simple tool with a hooked end (it actually looked more suited to dentistry and seemed out of place in the toolbox, but Fuuka wasn't going to question the bizarre mechanical needs of SEES). She deliberately began to move in with the functional ends of the tools, first the tiny hook which she looped around a tooth of the loose gear and then used to pull said gear forward on its axis.
While holding that in place, the studious technophile advanced with the head of the screwdriver, attentively maneuvering around surrounding contraptions to reach her destination. When the point settled in the grooves of the center screw, she gave the handle a few turns until everything was held fast on its own. "That should do it," Fuuka mumbled as she removed the tools with caution, holding them at the ready while she double-checked that all the offending machinery had been corrected. "Try moving your head now," she then instructed.
Aigis, who had been dutifully still throughout the repair process, did as her companion requested. Fuu could hear the happy surprise in the anti-Shadow bot's voice when she exclaimed, "It worked!"
This put a smile on the other girl's face. "Great! Let me put the plating back on and you'll be good as new." Meticulously Fuuka held the plates in place and screwed them firmly back onto Aigis' person. When she was sure everything was put back in its proper place, she turned on the couch and let her legs drop back over the edge, toes brushing the floor while she replaced her trusty utensils back into their ludicrously large home. "You're all fixed!" The toolbox was then locked and Fuuka stood up to go return it to the utility closet.
Aigis, in her comrade's absence, was bobbing her head this way and that and found nothing out of order. The corners of her lips pulled up into a smile just as Fuuka reentered the room. "Thank you," the still-seated blonde chimed as the steely-haired teen reclaimed her spot.
"No problem! I'm glad you feel better," returned Fuu cheerfully. "Tell me if you have any other problems, okay?"
The humanoid machine nodded and stood, though she did not exit the room, blue eyes fixated on the glossy surface of the coffee table in apparent thought. The other teenager was already back to her previous activities, laptop computer situated comfortably atop her thighs and her gaze glued to the glow of the screen.
After much heavy thought, Aigis delicately bent down towards Fuuka and with a further split second of hesitation, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. She straightened up just as Fuuka registered the sensation on her face and her hand came up to brush the spot where lips were now absent from.
"…what was that?" queried the surprised Gekkoukan student, blinking, stupefied, up at Aigis.
"A kiss," confirmed the other girl simply. "I understand that a kiss on the cheek may be used to express gratitude to another person. Is this incorrect?"
It took the dumbstruck Fuuka a few minutes to answer as her fingers absently began to fall from her face. "…no, that's right. Um…you're welcome."
Aigis smiled down at Fuuka before finally leaving, presumably to take part in any plans she made before she discovered the minor malfunction.
Fuuka was left with her laptop, and eventually as the robot's actions finally sank in, she couldn't stop herself from giving a little smile.