Aigis woke up first the next morning. Her legs had recovered, and she felt refreshingly good, as if she could run the whole day with no problems. She probably shouldn't try it in case she got tired again, but there should be something that she could do.
Quietly, she got out of her futon and folded it up neatly on the floor. She put on her sandals, then tiptoed out of the hut.
It was early morning, and sunlight was just beginning to spread past the treetops. The forest was quiet, and Aigis noticed that she still could not see or hear any animals in the area. From Morioka's explanation last night, they were probably scared away by the Sha– Hollows in the area.
She walked around the perimeter of the hut, noticing that there was a small stream behind the hut. That might be where Morioka got his water from. Aigis walked towards it, and got to take her first good look at her own face in the reflection of the water.
She looked almost identical to when she was alive, with short, cropped blond hair, bright blue eyes and a sharp chin that gave her a youthful look. The only difference was that there was some grime on her cheeks and nose, and the absence of her hairband. Her ears were normal, human ears too, not like the red disks that she used to have.
It almost felt like a dream come true, considering how much she wanted to be seen as human when she was alive. There was some irony in the situation too, how she actually became one by dying when she assumed that she would cease to exist.
The somewhat muted shock was still there, and Aigis was not sure how to feel about the whole absurd situation. She felt excited, happy, nervous, and as uncharacteristic of her as it was, scared.
Because, being human came along with a whole host of more practical problems.
She was so prone to getting injuries that this was the most vulnerable she had ever felt, along with the fact that it sealed her off from her most familiar weapons – her finger guns. Without a means to defend herself, Aigis felt exposed.
Every instinct of hers told her to run, hide, defend and arm herself, but she forcibly tamped them down. There was no need to fight anyone in Soul Society. Yet.
Although, she should not mention being a robot before she died.
Aigis splashed some water onto her face to wash off the grime, and noted how refreshing it was. Akihiko had that habit too, especially when he just woke up. He had explained how it felt to him before, but it was only now that she was able to appreciate what he had meant. Completely awake, she contemplated waking her rescuer up.
The rickety door creaked open just as she reached the entrance, revealing tousled hair, and face of Morioka. He yawned widely when he saw Aigis, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. One side of his cheek was red, from his uncomfortable sleeping position last night. He rolled his shoulder, bones creaking as he did so, then blinked and finally focused on her.
"Didn't think you were an early riser." he said. In the sunlight, she noticed that he was rather tanned.
"I did sleep most of the day away yesterday." Aigis said lightly.
"I suppose you did." Morioka opened the door fully, revealing that he had a water bottle attached to the sash on his waist, with the axe over his shoulder. "Feel free to stay around here, but don't go too far. Don't want the Hollows to eat you when you've barely been here. I need to chop some more wood for the town, otherwise they won't pay me."
Aigis nodded. "Stay safe." She said simply.
He grunted, then walked out to the forest. Aigis turned her attention back to the hut. It looked awfully dusty in the morning sunlight, motes dancing around the room whenever she moved. Morioka probably had not cleaned it in a while, even though there were some rags and a rudimentary broom in the corner, right next to the stove.
Well, she had worked as a pseudo maid before to the Kirijo Group heads. She still needed to repay him back for his kindness, after all.
That evening, Aigis cooked her own meal for the first time in her life. Or death.
She had gone out to gather food, then came across Morioka on the way back, and helped him out in chopping wood. His jaw almost dropped to the ground when he saw her lift the heavy axe without much of a sweat – there was no axe that really could top Labrys's in weight, after all, and had gone chopping at the trees in a speed that he could never hope to match in his life ("I thought you were a frail little flower!"). They ended up taking turns chopping trees, resulting in a rather large pile of wood that they carried back to the hut, where Morioka dropped his jaw for the second time in a day at the sparkling clean hut. She only hoped that she had repaid him back well enough.
To Aigis, it seemed that the afterlife was no different from the living, after all. She idly wondered if she would be able to find her friends in Soul Society, but from what she had gathered in her small talk with Morioka throughout the day, Soul Society was huge. The chances of that happening was close to zero.
Her heart fell when she understood that. She desperately wanted to reunite with her friends, because she was practically lost without them. She missed SEES. She missed the Investigation Team. She missed all the other Shadow Operatives. She yearned to apologise to those who lost their lives fighting for them.
Most importantly, she missed Labrys.
She was the only companion who constantly stayed with Aigis throughout her three-hundred-year lifespan, the one who comforted her during all the dark moments, the one who lent a listening ear to her troubles, the one who was her sounding board.
However, there was no use moping around bygones, even if Igor had said that her past would be important. She needed to move on.
She needed to make new bonds.
When Morioka insisted on her taking the futon again, Aigis decided that she had enough and bodily forced the wood cutter into the futon instead, with her taking up a corner in the now-clean hut.
The next morning made her realize why humans slept on futons in the first place. Her joints were creaky and stiff from sleeping on the hard floor the whole night, and her arm was numb from being a makeshift cushion. Still, they passed quickly enough, and she got up to prepare herself for a long trip.
Morioka had woken up almost at the same time as her, and while Aigis cooked her breakfast – some wild vegetable soup – he bundled up the logs stashed in the hut, tying them up with thick rattan rope. When she asked if he had some mode of transportation to help him move the large stack of wood, he shrugged, saying that there were no roads this deep in the forest. His body language however, betrayed his light words. He was already huffing slightly when the pile of wood was secured on his bent back, and walked much more slowly than before as he tread heavily through the grass.
Aigis ended up taking half of the wood from his back, carrying it the whole four-hour walk. Morioka had stopped thinking of her as a pampered princess by then despite her delicate features, and just wordlessly accepted her help.
The town turned out to resemble something straight out of feudal Japan, which surprised Aigis. A sprawling area of mud and wood houses dotted the landscape, broken up by the dust roads and fields that connected each house together. Most of the buildings had thatched roofs, though some of the bigger ones had tiles as roofing instead.
Having been used to massive glass and steel buildings her whole life, she could only stare at the almost fairytale-like scene in front of her. Morioka paid no heed to it, trudging along on the dust road and dropping off small stacks of logs at different households, and exchanging them for water, money and clothes. Most of the people living in the town had some basic supplies at home, so Aigis concluded that the area must be well governed.
The last household they visited, however, was somewhat different.
For starters, it was very loud.
Even before they reached the low mud house at the end of the road, a din could be heard from the inside, mostly children yelling and laughing. A large field stretched out behind the structure, which looked like it was freshly plowed. There were also a few children right in front of the doorway, appearing to play tag with each other. When one of them, a boy who looked to be around twelve, spotted Aigis and Morioka, he hurried back into the house, yelling for someone.
Ten seconds later, Aigis's battle instincts kicked in before she even realized what was happening.
She slid in front of Morioka, then raised her arms in a guarding position.
"YOU'RE LA—" The shout was abruptly cut off when Aigis neatly blocked the flying kick that came from inside the house, one hand holding onto the offending foot. Its owner pushed herself off Aigis's arms and landed heavily on the ground.
The woman who flew out of the house had an imposing aura around her. She was quite tall for a Japanese, with a curvaceous body and fair skin, and straight black hair that reached her upper back, tied together with a hairband. She wore a purple kimono, with the sleeves rolled up, and the front seemed to be covered in dust. Her brown eyes were currently wide open with surprise, which Aigis could relate to.
She herself had not expected to be greeted by a flying kick.
"Thanks for that, Aigis-chan," Morioka was the first to recover as he patted Aigis's shoulder. "You saved me from a painful stomachache."
The casual, almost joking manner in which he said that meant that there was no danger. Aigis allowed her arms to relax and fall back to her sides.
"It's no problem, Morioka-san," she replied, "It will not do for you to walk back to your home with any kind of harm on your body."
"Since when did you pick up a bodyguard?" the woman asked pointedly at Morioka, crossing her arms over her ample chest.
"She's not my bodyguard!" he retorted, slinging his stack of wood off his back. "She collapsed in front of my home two days ago. She just arrived in Soul Society."
"Oh? A new arrival?"
"I'd appreciate it if you could take care of her."
Aigis blinked. She had expected to have to fend for herself, even though she had no plan, but being pushed to another home was unexpected, though welcome. It would save Aigis a lot of effort in the long run, if she was going to live in Soul Society as long as she guessed – a few hundred years.
"You didn't have to do so, Morioka-san." Aigis tried to say.
"You're alright," he said, cutting her off from anymore arguments. "You actually helped me out more than I helped you out. The least I can do is arrange a more permanent place for you to stay." He then looked at the woman. "She's powerful. At least you can take care of her better than I can."
She sighed after a small pause. Her face softened considerably from the frown that she displayed before. "I suppose we have space for one more. Aigis-chan, huh?"
Aigis bowed. "I will be in your care then, ma'am," she said. She then turned back to Morioka and bowed, more deeply this time. "Thank you for everything until now."
"Just don't cause trouble for her. Doubt you would though." Morioka replied.
The woman grinned at her, all hostility gone from her face.
"Ooh, you have good manners!" She put one arm on Aigis's back, herding her into the house while carrying the stack of wood over her shoulder. "I'm Unagiya Ikumi. Just call me Ikumi-neesan!"
"Okay then, Unagiya-san." Aigis replied. Using polite speech, unfortunately, was ingrained in her system, and kicking the habit proved to be hard. She had only called her close friends by their first names, and Labrys was the only one she called without any honorifics in her whole life.
Unagiya gave a long sigh as she opened the door. "Fine then. At your own pace." At least she did not seem offended.
The house was much larger than Morioka's hut. It was also much messier. Clothes were strewn haphazardly on the mud floor, and there were several hammocks hanging from the ceiling. A few futons were laid out on the ground at the far end of the house, all put together as if trying to save space. There was a sizeable kitchen off to the side, with pots and pans laid over the stove inside. A tall stack of bowls was placed next to it, looking as if it was going to topple over any moment. Unagiya led Aigis to the back of the house, where a small wooden door opened to what seemed like a storage room. Picks, farming scythes and hoes lined the walls, and a small stack of wood was placed in the corner. Unagiya dropped her stack off there, and Aigis followed suit.
"Wait here for a bit." Unagiya instructed as she walked out of the storage room. She picked up a few coins from a table in the large living area, then hurried outside, dropping them in Morioka's palm and waved goodbye to him.
By now, the children in the house were all curiously staring at Aigis, and she was starting to feel slightly uncomfortable. She was by no means bad with children, but she did not have much experience interacting with them. Ken was an exception, but it was so long ago, she had mostly forgot how it was like.
"Um –" she began. That was apparently the signal for the children to speak.
"You were so cool, nee-san!" One of them piped up, the same black-haired boy who had called for Unagiya. "You blocked Ikumi-san's kick like it was nothing!" The other children also started speaking over each other, their eyes sparkling with excitement.
"Alright, alright, stop harassing her." Unagiya's voice cut through the din, making everyone turn around to her. "Go out and play, you guys, and don't crowd around her!" The children scattered out of the house, leaving her and Aigis in a considerably emptier room.
"Let's see, the extra bedding should be here…" Unagiya mumbled to herself while she rummaged through a closet in the corner. A moment later, she triumphantly pulled out a futon with an "aha!", and then took out a blanket and pillow, laying them out next to the rest. "It's a bit cramped here, but this should be enough space for you to sleep."
Aigis nodded in thanks, then started asking something that she had meant to ask for a while. "Why do you have so many children here?"
Unagiya smiled, the kind that only a mother could make. "They're all orphans, so somebody's got to take care of them. In this town, that's me," she explained, gazing fondly at the playing children outside. "Some of them also have a little power, so I need to feed them as well instead of just giving them water. I myself have a little. It's the reason why we have a field here, and how I earn my money. None of them are as strong as you though."
Aigis could not sense what Unagiya had meant when she mentioned "power", but she nodded in understanding anyway. "I see."
"Well, it's been a long time since anyone managed to block one of my attacks!" Unagiya said cheerfully. "You'll do just fine here. I'll let you live here as long as you help me out."
That was easy. "I understand." Aigis replied.
"Loosen up!" Unagiya hit her back with the force of a bear, though it did not faze Aigis. "Soul Society is so big, hardly anyone finds their families from when they're alive. So, we make do, and form new families. Now that you're here, you're one of us, got it?" Her voice softened considerably towards the end, as if sensing the lingering hesitation in Aigis.
"Thank you." She said.
"Now that's done, help me out in the kitchen, will you?"
Dinner turned out to be a rambunctious affair. The children – all eight of them, mostly appearing to be around four to fourteen, gathered around the only large table in the house, jostling against each other as they fought over the dishes laid out. The food was simple, just rice porridge, corn, and pickles, but it was much better than what Aigis had to eat while living at Morioka's hut. The children had quickly introduced themselves, barely giving Aigis time to introduce herself, before launching into a thousand questions about her. She hardly managed to catch their names, but she smiled and answered their questions as much as she could. Unagiya occasionally cut in, making sure all of the children had enough to eat, and giving Aigis some space.
After dinner was over and the dishes cleared, Unagiya herded the children to another room in the house, which turned out to be the bathroom. Aigis raised an eyebrow at the huge wooden tub in the middle of the room, but then reminded herself that Soul Society had the technological advancement of feudal Japan. She helped to heat up the bath water in the tub, then stayed outside while Unagiya struggled with the children ("It's crowded enough in here, we don't need another person taking up space!"). When the children were done washing themselves, Aigis went in to wash herself.
She was aware of a faint smell lingering around herself ever since the day before, and realized that she had not taken a bath ever since she arrived. She had not even taken off her kimono. Of course she would stink.
As Aigis looked down at her naked body while soaked in the hot bath, she appreciated how she and Labrys got realistic skin covers for their bodies, because it helped to cushion the impact of having a human body. It looked just like she remembered, with the right curves and tone. She could get used to this.
Aigis woke up at dawn again. Perhaps it was a carry-over from the time she was a robot, but she found that she usually did not need much sleep to function well. Everyone in the room was still asleep, their snores filling the room with white noise. Quietly getting out of bed, she folded her futon, then picked her way around the sleeping children to the doorway. There was something she wanted to try.
While alive, there was no need for practicing her combat moves. They were programmed into her body, and if she needed to practice, Labrys was always available for a spar. Here, though, there were no people who could possibly spar with her, and Aigis knew that if she did not train, her skills would deteriorate. It was not a necessary skill, but there was no telling what would happen in the future.
There was just one little problem.
She did not know how to practice alone.
She felt a little stupid, standing alone in the courtyard staring at her hands, wondering how to move them to practice combat. Perhaps she should test the limits of her body first?
Several tumbles into the ground later, both of Aigis's knees were scraped, a burning sensation spreading out from the wounds. Her feet were still getting in the way whenever she ran, tripping her up at unexpected moments. Her jumps were also much weaker than she had remembered, barely jumping a quarter of what she used to do. The strength was there in her legs, but it did not translate to her feet. Her kimono was also getting in the way, restricting the movement of her legs. The only upside was that her punches were as strong as she had remembered.
She looked ruefully at her own feet.
I suppose I will have to train them, Aigis thought.
Thankfully, no one was around to witness her embarrassing mishaps.
Unagiya watched Aigis stumble around from inside the house, looking as if she was trying to train, but also failing rather spectacularly at it. How did she stumble over herself so many times while running around? It contrasted heavily with the strength that she showed yesterday when she blocked the kick. The frankly worrying display of subservience she showed throughout the day yesterday was strange too.
Put together, it created a picture that made no sense.
Aigis was an enigma.
However, it also wasn't Unagiya's right to probe into her past.
She looked one last time at Aigis, doing what looked like shadow boxing, then moved away from the window, preparing breakfast for everyone.
As it turned out, there was much work to be done around the house.
Since she was the oldest appearance-wise, Aigis was put to work on the fields. The time was just right to start planting the crops, so that was what she did all day, scattering seeds in the plowed fields. It was hard work in a whole other category than what she was used to, and by the end of the day her back was having trouble trying to straighten up.
Somehow, the two children who scattered seeds with her – a girl named Megumi who looked around thirteen but was kindly informed by her that she was actually almost a hundred years old, and the twelve-year-old boy (who was actually seventy) called Kuro – looked fine, and were even energetically playing with the younger kids in the house right before dinnertime.
It made Aigis feel old. She probably was, compared to everyone else in the house.
Kuro joined Aigis the next day during her morning routine, despite her best attempts at being discreet while practicing.
"I want to learn these moves!" he exclaimed, wide black eyes glittering with excitement.
Aigis's first instinct was to deny him, because she herself did not have all her abilities under control, and she had no idea how to train a complete novice in combat. She was programmed with it, and all the other Persona users had experience with combat, so she did not have to train them, only guide them. But those puppy eyes were very hard to resist.
She highly suspected that there was no form to Kuro's combat style, if he even had one, but Aigis asked anyway: "Can you show me what you can do?"
"Sure, Aigis-neesan!" Kuro replied eagerly, then started punching the air from where he was standing – sloppily, before launching into a high kick. He ended up overbalancing, and his eyes widened considerably before slowly falling backwards to the dusty ground. Aigis scrambled to catch him, only to trip over her own feet and landed on the ground with a heavy thud. At least her hand had caught Kuro's head, so he was spared from a concussion.
She let out a little sigh of relief, but the boy needed to learn his lesson.
"Don't do anything that's beyond your limits, Kuro-kun." She reprimanded him gently.
His response was a pout right in her face, cheeks puffing up in indignance. "But you did it so easily just now!"
"I had practice."
"How long?"
The question caught Aigis off guard. How should she answer him?
"…A long time." She finally said after a pregnant pause.
"Then if I practice for a long time I should be able to do it too right?" Kuro pressed.
Aigis had no comeback to that.
She picked herself off the ground, brushing dust off her kimono. "Fine. But we start with the basics first."
Kuro started complaining loudly while still on the ground. "Why can't we do all the cool moves first?" he whined, kicking up a cloud of dust from his sitting position, covering his buzzcut with flecks of sand.
"I did say that it is beyond your limits," Aigis replied, as collected as before, "so you need to practice the basics before you try to do something more difficult." She extended a hand to pull Kuro up to a standing position. "I'm doing the basics too, before I start doing anything harder."
Kuro looked decidedly unhappy with her insistence on basics first, but before he could complain further, Aigis broke off into a run around the house, leaving him to catch up with her. He yelled after her, then took off at his fastest speed before finally running with her, shoulder to shoulder. Aigis slowed down so that they could both maintain a steady speed.
"Hey, Aigis-neesan," Kuro said between pants, "why do you run like that?"
It took a little while for Aigis to notice what he had meant, during which they ran half a circle around the house. She was still running like she had before she died, which meant that her arms were extended behind her as she ran, unlike how most ran while swinging their arms on their sides, which Kuro was doing.
"It makes me run faster." Aigis replied when she found the appropriate words to say, rather than something like it was programmed into me.
"Why?"
"Because my body is more streamlined, and that means there is less air drag when I run, so there is less resistance against my body and I can run faster while expending less energy."
Kuro's eyebrows knitted together at that explanation, mouth twitching to a slanted line, and stared at her to continue.
Oh, right. Aigis had to remember that she was talking to a child that barely knew anything about physics. How should she explain it?
She stopped running and he almost crashed into her. Looking around, Aigis eventually picked up a branch and started sketching on the ground, drawing diagrams that she hoped would clear up whatever questions Kuro had in his mind. "See, this happens when you run…"
The lesson lasted well over an hour, destroying her plans for training that day. But Kuro seemed so much happier when he went back into the house for breakfast, sweating all over and excitedly announcing what he learnt from Aigis that morning.
Her plans for training had just been shot to hell for the foreseeable future, hadn't it?
A/N: When I said familiar character, how many of you guessed Unagiya Ikumi, Ichigo's old boss?
I struggled a little with this chapter, writing myself into a corner at one point. I ended up taking a break from the story, then came back with something that could be used to progress the scenes, and wrote out a little more about Aigis's character development. I hope I do this right, because to me, Aigis already had plenty of development - how do you go further from there?
Also, I'm completely out of plot point ideas. Send me some random scenes you want Aigis in, and maybe I'll just put them into the story!
Many thanks to my beta TheMaybellTree, who pointed me in the right direction for writing and helped spot my worst mistakes!
As always, please review! I would ove to hear your opinions, whether good or bad!