Aigis thought she would never wake up again.
Apparently, that was wrong.
She first became aware of soft music flowing into her ears, which made her curious. She was dead, as far as her memories could tell her, so she had assumed that she would just cease to exist. If she was hearing something, then that theory would be wrong.
She decided to open her eyes.
Then promptly did a double take.
After all, Aigis had not accessed the Velvet Room in more than a hundred years.
It had once again taken up the shape of an elevator, the form she was most familiar with. As far as she could tell, it was parked. Aigis herself was seated on a plush, velvet chair as usual, with Igor grinning at her with his trademark creepy smile, seated at his usual desk. Behind him, the iron gates of the elevator marked the edge of the room, with only darkness as far as the eye could see beyond that. The clock on the iron gate was spinning, for some reason. Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen, nor any of the other attendants.
"Welcome to the Velvet Room," Igor's smooth voice interrupted Aigis's thought process. "I believe it has been a while, my dear guest. How curious to see you here."
"I thought…I was dead." Aigis replied.
"Yes indeed," Igor said nonchalantly, "but fate seems to have other plans for you."
Before Aigis could interrupt him, he continued.
"It seems that a new journey awaits you. You will not require our services – your bonds are more than sufficient to help you along." Here, Igor finally paused, waiting for Aigis's reaction.
"I understand."
Igor's smile grew marginally wider.
"I cannot wait to see what you will do," he said. "As a parting gift, let me read one last fortune for you."
At Aigis's nod, he took out a deck of tarot cards and laid them on the table. With one hand, he spread them out in a circle, much like how he usually fused different Personas together. Then, he gently flipped one card over, his hand not touching the deck the whole time.
The card flipped over was the upright Hierophant.
"Ah yes," Igor mused, "your past will be important in your upcoming tasks. How you will handle it – " he waved his hand and the cards disappeared into puffs of blue smoke, "is up to you."
Cryptic as usual, Aigis thought. She straightened her back as indication that she heard him.
"I should not be keeping you here any longer," he finally said, as black mist creeped up the edges of Aigis's vision. "Well then, I wish you the best of luck."
The Velvet Room faded completely from her consciousness.
Aigis became aware of herself and her surroundings when she felt a gentle breeze brush past her face. Slowly, she realized she could smell something around her. She recognized it too. It was the smell of grass.
She decided to open her eyes.
Then promptly squeezed them shut.
Sunlight had almost blinded her…!
She hastily threw an arm over her eyes to block out the sun. After the dizzying dots of light finally cleared from her eyes, Aigis opened her eyes, more cautiously this time.
Her guess was right. She was indeed laid down in a clearing, heavily forested on all sides. As far as she could see, there was no end to the forest beyond the clearing, and from the position of the sun, it was probably sometime late morning. She sat up from her position, wanting a better look at the surroundings.
She then remembered something that she neglected when she tried to block the sun with her arm. Her arm felt warm. If her arm was that warm, it usually meant she was overheating. However, she had not done anything except waking up, and she heavily doubted that someone had programmed her to do something while she was unconscious. The remote control for her system had been thrown away a long time ago.
At that thought, she realized something critical.
She could not tell the state of her body.
There was always a small display in the corner of her vision whenever she was active, showing the status of her body, where it was working normally, where it was damaged, or where it was overheating. However, she found no such display in her vision, which was odd.
Aigis finally looked down at her body.
She was somehow clothed in a pale blue kimono, which reminded her of the dress that she had worn on the pier in Yakushima, where she first met Makoto. That was not the important part. The important part was that her feet had changed.
She never remembered straw sandals actually fitting over her feet, nor getting an upgrade to have toes on them.
The unexpected addition to her body was soon ignored in favour of realizing that she was somehow sensing everything wrong. Everything was more vivid than when she was alive, with her acutely sensing changes in wind direction and temperature. Instead of it being merely units of data, it felt as if everything was real in a way she had never experienced before. A hypothesis slowly formed in her mind, Aigis finally realizing that she might have been slightly slow on the uptake.
Just to confirm her theory, she pinched herself.
What felt like electricity jolted through her senses from where she had pinched herself, startling her. More astonishingly, she felt flesh.
For one reason or another, Aigis had turned human.
No machinery inside her body.
No finger guns when she tried to activate them.
No weapons coming out of her back.
No disks representing her ears.
Well, no wonder she got toes. Tentatively, she tried to move them, just to see if she could control each individual toe.
They did not budge.
Oh, of course. Aigis did not know which muscles pulled the toes. Theoretically, she knew, but she had no experience controlling them as a robot with a stub for a foot. To remedy that, she bent over to gingerly touch them with her hand.
Another jolt of electricity passed through her body when her hand made contact with her foot, in a place where Aigis felt it was absolutely weird. It was as if the toe existed entirely outside of her system, like unexpectedly touching something invisible. Except it was connected to herself. She gently bended each toe with her finger, familiarizing herself with the motor control of her toes.
After a few minutes, Aigis decided to try standing up.
She knew how to move her body, but the unexpected appendage at the end of her leg proved to be getting in the way, and it felt woefully weak, unlike the rest of her body which felt closer to the kind of strength that she had as a robot. Not quite as strong as back she was alive, but close to a well-trained Persona user. With great effort and a boost from her hand still on the grass, she finally stood up on shaky legs.
That had taken much more of her energy than she had anticipated. Still, it felt easier the longer she remained standing, so she decided to take a step when she felt her balance was good enough.
That was a mistake.
The moment Aigis lifted her left leg up, her left foot caught the back of her right leg, shifting her center of balance and sending her toppling back into the grass, face first. The same jolt that she felt when she pinched herself exploded all over her front side, though not quite as strongly as before. Belatedly, she realized that that was probably how humans felt pain.
It felt tempting to keep laying down on the ground, but Aigis was stubborn. She slowly regained control of her motor functions, and pulled herself back up. Standing up did not feel like such a chore, now that she went through the motions of it again.
She took a step, this time more carefully than before. Her right foot brushed against her left leg, but otherwise she managed to take one small, wobbly step. That was progress.
Five unstable steps later, another step almost tripped her over, but she braced her body against a tree before she could fall again into the grass. Using the chance to take a break, Aigis looked over her surroundings again.
The forest still stretched out as far as her eyes could see, and she still did not know where she was. However, upon closer inspection, the forest was not as dense as she had initially assumed, with sunlight filtering through the leaves in intermittent patches on the grass. There was enough light to see where she was going, at the very least. From the light green colour of the trees, she assumed that the date roughly coincided with her death, in March. Strangely though, she did not see any sort of wildlife from when she woke up.
That was cause for concern, but Aigis was not going to make any progress in investigating her situation if she stayed here. She pushed herself off the tree trunk, and kept walking.
Morning turned to dusk, but Aigis still had not found any civilization. Nothing else had happened on her journey either, save for sparse roars coming from different directions. They sounded eerily like the sounds that Shadows manifesting in the real world would make, so Aigis steered clear of them. She did not want to get in a fight while she was so weak and out of control of her motor functions, plus she did not know if, as a human, she would now need an Evoker to summon a Persona. She did not want to risk it.
There was no way she was going to give up her new, puzzling life so easily.
Dusk turned to night, and the roars became more frequent, forcing Aigis to divert further from her original calculated path. It was hard to see in the dark, the moon providing much less light than the sun would have. She had tried to turn on her night vision mode for her eyes, but it was only after a few tries to activate them before Aigis remembered that humans did not have this function. It made navigating the forest all that much harder, and she crashed into tree trunks several times, though at that point she was slowly getting used to the feeling of pain. The air still felt warm enough, but her feet were getting heavier and stiffer for some reason, and they felt strangely hot. A soft, gurgling sound, coupled with a strange, bubbly feeling around the area of her abdomen slowly increased in frequency the longer she walked. Her throat slowly started to feel like sandpaper.
She ignored them.
Night turned to dawn, the first rays of orange peeking through the treetops. Aigis had kept walking all this time, avoiding what she assumed were Shadows, occasionally stumbling into a tree or tripping over undergrowth. The strange, bubbly feeling in her abdomen was gone, replaced by something like a miniature storm cloud, small jolts of pain constantly stabbing through the area. Her throat was now positively raking against her senses. Her steps had become slow and sluggish. With more light to see her surroundings, Aigis found that she was still deep within the forest, but then she noticed something out of the ordinary.
There was a hut, half hidden by the trees between them.
Ah, so there was civilization here.
She hastened her steps to the hut, willing her legs to take her as fast as they could move. Half hobbling, half running, she reached out her hand –
Her sensors suddenly shut down, leaving Aigis in complete darkness. A second later, her awareness shut down.
Later that morning, a man walked out of his hut, and nearly tripped over something right in front of his doorway.
"Great, another lost traveler?"
Aigis woke up to the sound of something knocking against each other. As her senses recovered, she realized it was the sound of wood knocking against metal. Judging it to be dark enough, she opened her eyes.
She was in a small structure, probably the hut that she saw before she lost consciousness, laying down on a futon, a think blanket spread out over her body. To her left, a pile of chopped wood was stacked haphazardly against a mud-covered wall with a large axe leaning against them; to her right, a low, wooden table was laid out, the kind that Aigis would often see at traditional Japanese homes. Straight in front of her was a doorway that led to outside, with orange sunlight filtering through the doorway. It seems like she had slept through the whole day and woke up at dusk. Off to the side, someone had his back turned to her, appearing to cook something on top of a fire stove. He appeared to be rather stocky and average in height, meaning that he was somewhat taller than Aigis. His hair was roughly cropped, and there were some silver strands showing against his black hair. He wore a dull grey yukata, and a pair of straw sandals just like her own.
Aigis tried to sit up, but found that she had no strength to do so. Additionally, her legs felt like they were on fire, though she was sure they were not, otherwise she knew she would have burned away her futon a long time ago. They were also quite locked in place, feeling like someone had weighed her legs down with lead. Her throat still felt like sandpaper rubbing against the inside of her neck.
Her struggles did not go unheard though, as the man in the hut had somehow heard her shift in her blanket over the din of his cooking, and he turned around to look.
"Oh, seems like the little princess is finally awake!" He said. When Aigis did not react with anything other than a questioning look, he sighed and continued. "How do you feel?"
I seem to be unable to move my body, was what she wanted to say, but it only came out as a hoarse whisper. The man looked somewhat startled, then a resigned look crept onto his face.
"Do you want some water first?" He asked.
Aigis nodded. She would take what she could for now and pay him back later. She knew that water was essential for humans to live, but seemed to have forgotten that while she was travelling yesterday.
The man came back with a wooden bowl, filled with clear water. He propped Aigis up a little using his free arm, grunting as he did so, and tipped the bowl slightly towards Aigis's mouth, guiding her to swallow it.
Once the first drops of water touched her throat, it felt as if it was smoothing over. Her neck no longer felt uncomfortable, but it was not enough. She kept on drinking until the bowl was empty, then let out a long, satisfied sigh.
So that was what thirst felt like. Aigis made a mental note to remember the feeling, and not neglect what her body is telling her, now that she did not have an automated system to give her updates. She did not need her body breaking down, and if it did, it would take far too much effort to fix her body, unlike how broken machine parts could be easily replaced.
"Need some more?" The man asked.
"Yes please," she replied, "and thank you."
At least her voice came out just like she had remembered, with the same general tonality.
"No need to thank me," he said gruffly as he went to fill the bowl with water, "though I would appreciate travelers like you to stop appearing in front of my home out of nowhere. I know it's tough to survive, but it's a strain on me too." He came back, then handed the bowl to Aigis, who was now sitting upright on the futon. She accepted it with slightly shaking hands, and demurely took sips from it. The man sat down next to the table, crossing his legs over each other.
While drinking the water, Aigis took her first good look at her rescuer.
He was quite rugged in a world-weary way, as if he had seen quite a bit of life. The crinkles around his eyes and mouth indicated that he appeared to be around his late forties to fifties, and his face reminded her of a gorilla, with small, beady eyes and a mouth that seemed to be out of proportion to the rest of his face. Lingering stubble stuck out around his chin.
When Aigis finished her next bowl of water, he stood up and walked over to the stove.
"Guess the porridge should be ready," he mumbled. Then louder, "Did you know how loudly your stomach growled when you were asleep? I had to specifically go out to gather food for you, you know."
Was it really that loud? Normally, Aigis guessed that she should have been surprised or embarrassed. Yukari certainly did that. However, her lack of energy discouraged her from doing anything other than stare blankly at his back.
He came back from the stove with one steaming pile of mush. It did not look appetizing, but she knew that she had no choice but to accept, for her own survival.
"I am sorry to have troubled you, sir." Aigis apologized while eating the porridge with a spoon that he passed to her. The man gave a grunt from his position at the table. From what he said earlier, she concluded that the growling in her abdomen from last night was probably her body telling her that she was hungry. It seemed to be true too, as the pain in her stomach slowly lessened the more she ate. That was another point to take note of, if she wanted to survive and find out what Igor meant.
The food was practically tasteless, with the barest hint of grass, and the texture was like stone mixed with pulp. Still, it was edible, so she ate it without a complaint.
"Don't 'sir' me, girl," he said with some annoyance in his tone, as if he was not used to being called that. "If you need to, call me Morioka-san. Morioka Kaneto's my name."
Aigis did a small bow, as much as she could manage while sitting in a futon with a bowl of porridge. "Aigis. It's nice to meet you, Morioka-san."
"Keh," Morioka grunted. "A foreigner? Don't see many of them around."
She made no discernible reaction. He was the first person that she met after waking up here, and since he spoke Japanese to her, she assumed that she was somewhere with a large Japanese population.
"If I may ask, where is this place?" Aigis asked in the middle of her meal. The man raised one bushy eyebrow at her, seemingly finding the question rather incredulous.
"It's the forest outside the thirty-fifth district in South Rukongai, missy," he replied offhandedly. "This place is some pretty ways out from the nearest town. How did you even get here?"
Aigis stopped the spoon that was halfway to her mouth. "Rukon…gai?"
Morioka's other eyebrow joined his first. "You…" he began, then understanding came over his face. "Oh. So you're a new soul."
This was getting stranger by the minute. "A new soul?" Aigis asked. That was a strange way to reference her.
"You just died, didn't you?" The frank way he said that aloud threw her off balance, and she could only mutely nod to the question. He took it as permission to continue.
"This whole place, we call it Soul Society," Morioka explained while Aigis resumed eating. "It's where souls of the dead come to live. The place we're in, Rukongai, is the residential district of Soul Society."
Aigis could see how the name fit the purpose. It was indeed a place for wandering souls.
"Are there other districts?" she asked in between bites.
"Just one more. We call it Seireitei," he replied. "It's where the Shinigami live, and is in the center of Soul Society."
Shinigami?
At Aigis's puzzled look, Morioka sighed.
"You seriously don't know anything do you?
"…No. I woke up yesterday."
He seemed about ready to tear his hair out.
"Fine. Were you guided here by a person wearing a black kimono, wielding a sword?"
"No."
Aigis neglected to mention that she had seen who he was referring to, when she went hunting for Shadows in the real world. They never seemed to notice her, and both parties kept a wide berth between them.
"Well, they're the Shinigami. They basically act as the police, doing patrols, guiding souls to the afterlife, killing Hollows and all."
Aigis felt bad about getting him to explain so many things, but something in that sentence caught her ears.
"Hollows?"
"Monsters." His reply was curt. "Deranged souls with bone masks and a hole somewhere on their body. Eats souls as their meals."
She nodded at his explanation with a neutral expression, but inwardly she was frowning. That sounded uncomfortably similar to the Shadows she had to fight in the real world, especially because she remembered some of them trying to eat some of her operatives. Nobody actually got eaten, but it was close.
His explanation on Shinigami done, he went on to the next topic.
"Souls here don't age quickly." Morioka thumped his chest. "Been here over a hundred years, and all that changed was a couple more white hairs. Most of us don't get hungry, and we only need to drink food to survive."
"How did I get hungry then?" His explanation did not make sense to Aigis.
"Exceptions." He replied. "People with reiryoku get hungry."
Another new term.
"Reiryoku?"
"Spiritual energy, in other words. Kinda like magic. Soul Society is basically made of this stuff, but most people only have a little and can live off the land. Most of the powerful people end up as Shinigami because they get a better life there than us folks here."
Ah. So that was why he had to go out to gather food for her. Judging from the way he talked and how sparse his hut was, Aigis assumed that Morioka did not have much reiryoku. She also had a good guess to where her own reiryoku came from.
There was a lull in the conversation, during which Aigis ate more of her porridge.
"If possible," she began, after finishing her food, "could you take me to the nearest town?"
Morioka looked contemplative for a moment, then nodded. "I'm going to town in two days to drop off the lumber there," his head jerked to the pile of wood next to her futon, "so you can come with me. I don't mind you staying here for one more day, but after we go to the town, shoo!"
Aigis nodded in understanding. He had not seemed unkind, but she suspected that Morioka only took care of her out of a sense of duty, or pity. It was true that she would be a burden to him if he had to take care of her, purely because she needed to eat. For him, it would be easier if he was alone.
It was now dark outside. Morioka lit an oil lamp on the wall, and went about cleaning the dishes that she had been using. Aigis herself kept trying to move her legs. They felt cooler and more relaxed compared to when she had first woken up, but they were still quite numb. She had also noted that her sandals were next to her futon – Morioka probably took them off when he put her to bed, though he had the decency to keep her clothes on.
With nothing else to do, she mentally reviewed what she learnt the past two days.
Aigis had somehow ended up in Soul Society, essentially the afterlife. Her body was completely human, despite the fact that she was a robot while alive. It may have been because she always regarded herself as a human, regardless of her robotic appearance, so that was why whatever governed the flow of souls recognized her as a human, and her body reflected that. Everything she sensed was no longer converted into data bits to be fed to her computer brain, now relying much on her previous knowledge and intuition. While her memories were mostly preserved, some knowledge was lost, particularly those that were fed into her as data. She could no longer recall some of the minor bits of information that scientists had uploaded into her computer system before Mitsuru started taking care of her. It also meant that she had needs, including food, water, sleep, and probably the need to go to the toilet too, even if it hasn't happened yet. The numb feeling from her legs was most likely caused by walking for too long, resulting in them tiring out.
Of course, Aigis knew what "tired" felt like. However, as a robot, her fatigue was mainly mental, usually when she went without a power recharge for a long time, or when she summoned her Persona too many times. Theoretically, she could go on forever. However, physical fatigue was a new sensation to her, and it was only now that she realized why humans needed to sleep.
It seemed that the human body was indeed quite fragile.
She pulled her consciousness inward to check on her Personas. They were still there, in the deep recesses of her soul, a gentle, comforting presence in this new reality of hers. However, with how unresponsive they were, Aigis suspected that she would not be able to summon them for a long time.
She refocused on her surroundings when Morioka sat down at the table with a loud thump, and then slumped over it. Noticing what he was going to do, Aigis tried to scramble out of her futon, only for her to get tangled in the sheets.
"Keep quiet or else I can't sleep!" Morioka groaned at the sound of loud shuffling. "I'm not cruel enough to make you sleep on the dust floor when you haven't even recovered yet!"
"I have been sleeping in it long enough." Aigis said. "You should take it."
"Just keep it until you leave!"
"No. You must take care of your own health too."
"Who are you, my mother? Besides, you should mind your own health first!"
In the end, she was forced back into the futon, and Morioka passed out on the table.
A/N: I actually finished this 4 days after the first chapter was posted on , but I was still figuring out the story and there were several uncertain things that I wanted to address before posting, hence the delay. I'm not exactly happy with this chapter, but it's necessary world-building stuff that needed to get out of the way. Hopefully I can come back later to edit it, but for now it will stay as it is.
I planned out more of the story, so now I have an endgame in mind, but the first few chapters will stay as one-shots before the plot finally kicks off.
Next chapter: A familiar character finally makes an appearance!