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Aigis knows that Kotone’s hair is red.
She knows that her eyes are also red, but a different shade of red than her hair. Yet, still red somehow.
It is difficult to explain how two objects may share a single clarifying descriptor (i.e., red eyes, red hair) only for the descriptor to fail at its ultimate purpose of uniting those two objects beneath the umbrella of a shared hue. It is frustrating. The fact that one word, “red”, can denote so many different things: her hair, her eyes, her tongue as it peeps playfully from her lips like “belp”, as they say, her nose, even, when it is cold outside.
Kotone’s insides are mushy. Should an enemy harm her in battle, those insides ooze from her body (RED), and the immediate goal is to stem the tear where the blood leaks from the tender of her skin. The human body is so frail. Gushy and gooey, and filled with butterflies, or so Aigis has heard, as Kotone laces her small hand with Aigis’s larger own. She says, “I have butterflies in my stomach”.
Aigis looks at her for a moment, before staring hard at Kotone’s stomach, concerned: “How do we remove them?” she says.
Kotone laughs so hard that she snorts, and Aigis asks, “Is there a pig inside you as well?” which only makes Kotone laugh harder, clutching her stomach, as though fearful that the butterflies might fall out.
Language is moot to Aigis. A breakdown of logic and reason disguised as structure, as communication and therefore solution. And therefore, prosperity, peace. But what peace does language provide for Aigis when there are so many meanings to the one word red? When Kotone’s lower lip tints a darker shade (RED) as she bites down on it with her teeth. Her cheeks flush (RED), but it is not cold inside the dorm, it is 19 degrees Celsius according to the heating display on the wall.
So, Aigis asks: “Are you cold?”
Kotone’s eyes narrow, the corners of her lips curling upward into a grin; it is an expression Aigis is familiar with but one she has not yet managed to pinpoint the meaning of. Still, she is aware of correlative sequences, of action and consequence, how when Kotone grins as such with a twinkle in her red eyes, and vampire teeth glistening, that bad things happen. That roofs are swept from buildings, and zombies are raised from the dead, and entire packs of cookie dough are consumed until their stomachs ache and Shinjiro chastises them.
So, Kotone flings her arms about Aigis’s shoulders, her head nuzzling into Aigis’s neck. “I’m soooo cold,” she whines into Aigis’s ear. “You’ll keep me warm, though, won’t you, Aigis~?”
Kotone!” says Aigis, shocked.
“Ahhh~! You’re so snuggly Aigis!”
“I am snuggly?” says Aigis.
“Snuggly buggly,” affirms Kotone with a nod punctuating both words.
“’Buggly’ is not a word I am familiar with. Perhaps you could elaborate so that I may be ‘snuggly buggly’ to the fullest extent.”
When in active combat, Aigis’s vision is overlayed with a grid and the world is tinted a cool blue. Her eyes are drawn to [THE TARGET] to defeat, locking onto each other if there are multiple, by order of priority. Just then, the grid cuts across her vision, and she startles, her eyes flick around to uncover the source which her automated detection system has declared to be a threat.
Koromaru sleeps peacefully in the corner of the lounge, he has already been walked for the day. The television is playing Phoenix Ranger Featherman R, the show which Ken watches when he believes no one is observing him. The room is vacant aside from herself and Kotone, wrapped together on the sofa.
Glancing down at Kotone, a halo of blue wraps about her head, but she does not appear as an enemy on a grid format. Instead, she is something angelic. As warning signs flicker before Aigis’s vision [WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!], the colour changes from blue (mid-level threat) to red (that word, another meaning to the word).
The code inside her body churns out reason, logic, science, something – anything – that might be useful to the situation. [DISENGAGE!], her whole body is shrieking, but her arms stiffen and she unable to move, the joints tight as though she has been downed by a shadow. As though she is a machine that has not been properly oiled, or her code is malfunctioning, her battery running low. She is slowing dooooown.
Suddenly, a pop like a wire sparking, and her head lulls forward, resting atop Kotone’s own. A burst of smoke swells up from the space on the back of her neck, where her ribbon runs rings before shuddering to a halt. The smoke rises.
Kotone’s voice rings out shrill, “Aigis?” she has lifted her head and has placed both her hands on Aigis’s shoulders, shaking her furiously so that her head flops back and forth, back and forth. “Dang it, Aigis! Talk to me!”
The smoke bellows upward, bursting into the shape of a heart before it laces with the open slats of the smoke detector, setting it off.
System restart required.
Restart. Remind me later.
[Remind me later.]
-
Kotone leans in, she is sat adjacent to Aigis on the sofa on the second floor of the dorm, and she is an explosion of sensations: the scent of chocolate from the cooking club and the sweetest strawberry shampoo, the touch of soft fingertips to the hard of Aigis’s bare thigh (as bare as a robot is capable of being). The little giggle on her lips as she offers her flip phone’s screen to Aigis, the gentle clink of her two phone charms hitting together. They are a bunny and a fox.
“Look at this,” says Kotone.
There is a video on the screen depicting a small, fluffy kitten struggling to climb atop a loveseat. The kitten leaps but its little paws are unable to gain purchase, so it stumbles down again, plopping onto its tail.
Kotone says, “Isn’t that so freaking cute?” and Aigis is made to consider the many different instances in which one might laugh at a kitten falling down: mockery, except that Kotone is not a cruel person. Perhaps, there is pun in the human language involving the mounting of an obstacle and the ultimate failure to do so which Aigis is not aware of, something lost on her. And the fact of this feeling of loss prompts the tracking technology ingrained into her system to depict a map before her vision. A small dot flashes, declaring her location to be the Iwatodai dorm, situated in Port Island.
But she is not actually physically lost, that is the confusion. It is only that she is drowning within the depths of the social situation. She has not moved from her current whereabouts and cannot move from the settee on the second floor. To drown is to fall downward through a single string of space. She could meet the centre of the universe, and still be in the small nook attached to the girls’ hallway.
Aigis glances at Kotone, her eyes glisten as she stares at her phone. The video is repeating itself with the same result each time. The cat wriggles its little bum and raises itself back to its paws, and the laughter bubbles in Kotone’s throat. It is musical, or what one who knows about music might consider musical, but what does Aigis know about music?
She is still staring at Kotone when Kotone turns her gaze to meet her. “Have I got something on my face?” she says with a grin.
Aigis scans her face. “Not a thing,” she concludes, and although this is true, somehow it feels like a lie. Her stomach clenches, but her stomach should not be capable of clenching unless something in her body is malfunctioning. Unless something is going wrong. Perhaps it is guilt she is feeling, the guilt from lying, but she is not lying, and she does not actually know how that feeling manifests in the human body.
Just then, a peck is placed on her cheek, quick as a shadow strikes. Kotone’s lips hot against the cool metal of Aigis’s exterior, lingering for one second, two seconds, three and half seconds long, before she pulls away with a giggle. Flitting down the stairs, how her ponytail waggles behind her like a flare, and her laughter dances down the hall in her wake. Aigis wants to chase her down, fast like a predator chases its prey, with knees high and eyes sharp and arms rigid.
Reaching a hand up to her cheek, she does not feel the heat in her skin to touch, but senses it as it spreads through her insides like a sweet pink poison.
Malware detected! Do you wish to wipe the system?
Yes. No.
[No.]
-
Kotone sleeps with her mouth wide open, drool trickling from the corner of her lips right onto her pillow. Aigis stares into her mouth to try and catch sight of a butterfly flitting about, but so far, she has been unsuccessful. Stood over Kotone’s body as rests with her leg flung free from the blankets and both arms raised above her head. Red hair splayed spikey about that sodden pillow like the licking ends of a blaze.
To ‘see red’ linguistically means ‘to become enraged’, or ‘to lose one’s temper very suddenly’, and such phrases make it clear to Aigis the disparity between human and machine, because anger, for her, is not a colour, and even if it was, red, for her, is not rage. Red is soft and warm, it is exciting and hot, it is bubbly and curious, it is the livewire in a metal body. It is the electric current buzzing in cursive to the tips of all her limbs, her fingers, and her toes, spelling out one word: Kotone.
-
Kotone invites Aigis to a sleepover, as though Aigis is capable of sleeping. As though Aigis doesn’t live in the same dorm as her. “Pretty please?” she asks, with lashes fluttering prettily, and a bolt in Aigis’s stomach tightens. The word ‘no’ is all but erased from her hard drive.
“Of course,” Aigis says. That’s all she says, ‘Of course’, but thinks to herself, ‘I would like that a lot’, which is a strange thing for her to think because usually Aigis doesn’t ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ anything, she simply does. She fights shadows, not because she dislikes shadows, or because she likes fighting, but because she has been programmed to do so. And yet at the thought of sharing a bed with Kotone a warmth surges through the wires in her arms, prickling to the ends of her fingers so that a wisp of smoke rises from each tip like a gun fired.
Aigis shakes her hand suddenly, dismissing the smoke.
That night in Kotone’s bedroom, they sit on the floor, which Aigis does not understand as the bed is right there and surely more comfortable for Kotone. She does not question it. Instead, sits upon blankets strewn along the ground in pinks and oranges. Pillows piled plump for them to lie against and stare up at the television which Kotone has dragged to the centre of the room to face them. Between them lies a bowl of popcorn, sweet and salted, which Kotone shoves into her mouth in fistfuls.
Aigis reclines herself awkwardly into the plush of the pillows, her body stiff, and her arms straight out at her side.
Kotone laughs. “Are you ok?” she says, staring down at Aigis.
“I am fine,” says Aigis.
Aigis is unable to feel the pleasure of the softness of the pillows as they are crushed beneath her back; there is only discomfort as her body slips further down into feathers and cotton like quicksand.
“Okay, nope, not happening,” says Kotone, rocking herself forward and to her feet. “You look so stiff.”
She is smiling wide as she stands above Aigis. “Get up,” she says, reaching both hands outward and wiggling her fingers.
Behind her, the television is showing Disney’s Tangled. It is the scene where Rapunzel is singing about when her life will begin. Kotone is wearing sweet little pink pyjama shorts, dotted in red strawberries. On her feet, huge rabbit slippers with floppy ears and curly whiskers. Her fingers continue to wiggle.
Aigis reaches her own up in return, clasps her hands into Kotone’s, who hoists her up as though she does not weigh a ton. Kotone is little but she is strong, her face does not even flinch from its grin as she drags Aigis to her feet with ease. She makes Aigis feel delicate, as if she is not made of bolts and gears. When their fingers interlock, Kotone does not shudder against the cool touch of metal, and she does not let go. Instead, she squeezes Aigis’s hands, melts into them so that their palms are aligned.
“I am up,” Aigis declares.
“Come on now,” says Kotone. “Move with me.”
“Move?” asks Aigis. “I cannot move you are in my way.”
Kotone begins pulling one of Aigis’s hands toward her, while throwing the other toward Aigis, their fingers still intertwined. Aigis follows her lead, how her arms become buoyant, the elbows loosening as though her joints have been freshly oiled, back and forth they tossed their hands between each other to the rhythm Kotone has created. It goes one-two, one-two, one-two, until Kotone says, “Now, wiggle those hips!”
Her hands slide down Aigis’s waist to her hips. She brushes with her pinkies the winged arches which protrude from Aigis’s thighs beneath the soft cotton of her night gown. It is a sweet little night gown, unearthed by Mitsuru from her backlog of clothing, out of season now. Frilled at the shoulders and the hem, it flows as Aigis sways to Kotone’s lead.
“Is this correct?” she asks, and Kotone is giggling, she is excited. The way she tosses her head back in laughter, her eyes squeezed shut.
“Perfect,” she says, and moves herself closer to Aigis, tossing her arms about Aigis’s shoulders, tugging them nearer together so that their stomachs meld, before pushing them further apart again.
“This is dancing,” says Aigis.
“Yup,” says Kotone.
“But there is no music.”
At that, Kotone begins creating strange sounds with her mouth akin to a drumbeat, followed up by a series of ‘na na na’s in a tune that Aigis is not familiar with, and which retains no sort of logical progression. Then again, Aigis knows so little about music, and the messy beat-boxing sounds spilling from Kotone’s pursed lips could be a masterpiece as far as she is concerned.
Aigis’s body is a feat of technological genius, designed to withstand the most brutal of Shadow assaults. She is made aware by a flash of [WARNING] before her vision when a limb is severed from the whole but she is numb to the pain a human would feel. Void of nerve endings, she does not know the meaning of the word ‘ache’, and yet the sight of Kotone’s smile makes her feel as though her chest is caving inward.
If she had a heart, it would be breaking.
Kotone makes her feel breakable.
Kotone is breathless from the dancing. When she leans in close, her breath whispers against Aigis’s neck, and it isn’t that her receptors are alerting her to the presence of breath against the shell of her body, it is something else entirely. The breath is there on her neck, and she is aware of her neck. She is aware of her own existence without the need for a mediator, and that existence is covered with bruises where Kotone’s lips are near.
Kotone makes her feel vulnerable.
It took Fuuka hours to repair Aigis after her malfunction the previous day. Aigis remained conscious but unresponsive during the entire procedure, and therefore observed idly as Kotone delivered cups of tea to Fuuka, a bouquet of flowers for Aigis herself, and a ‘get well soon’ card featuring a cartoon duck, signed by the entire dorm.
“What is the purpose?” asked Aigis, after awaking and staring at blooms of white and yellow and red.
“To lift your spirits.”
“I do not possess a spirit to be lifted.”
Kotone paused for a moment, before asking: “Well, how do the flowers make you feel?”
“Make me feel?” asked Aigis.
“Yeah, like, looking at them,” she said. “What do you feel?”
But they were just flowers, it was not like bright colours or sweet smells could accelerate the rate at which a machine is mended; all that depended upon Fuuka, not upon Aigis or her non-existent spirits.
“You’re blushing,” Kotone whispered then, and she whispers the same thing now, directly into Aigis’s audio receptors, and she feels that breath against the sculpt of those receptors as though she has ears. As though she has skin which, once touched, erupts in goosebumps along the surface. And maybe Fuuka hadn’t done a very good job at fixing her at all. There must still be a screw loose, in need of screwing.
Because it didn’t make sense.
For Aigis to be blushing, she first requires blood. Not just that, but a stream of it coursing through her veins. She needs veins within which the blood can course. Needs the heart which pulses the blood through the body to begin with, an organ which she does not possess because she does not possess organs at all. All that is red on Aigis is the colour of her bow.
“Impossible,” says Aigis.
Reaching a hand up, Kotone pinches at Aigis’s cheek, and laughs. Tugs playfully at the flesh of her cheek, how it stretches. Aigis winces, not from the pain (because it was such a minor sting) but from the thought of flesh to begin with.
“So, freaking cute,” says Kotone, and Aigis imagines herself as that small kitten struggling to overcome the great height of the settee, only to plummet to the ground once more. Reset the video, and watch the cat fail again. Fail again. Fail again. Again.
DO YOU WISH TO RESET?
YES. NO.
Aigis leans into Kotone’s touch. So, Kotone shifts her fingers to cradle Aigis’s face from cheekbone to chin, and her touch is cool against the heat there.
[NO]
[NO]
[NO]
[NO]
Standing at 5’8, Aigis towers over Kotone by five inches. She has never known her height to be anything other than advantageous, and yet glancing down at Kotone then she is overwhelmed by how petite she is.
Aigis wants nothing more than to protect this person for the rest of her existence, until her limbs rust to rigidity. Even then, she will hoist herself as a scarecrow outside of Kotone’s bedroom and frighten away Shadows and crows and boys with smarmy faces.
If anger is red, then jealousy is green and thick like bile. Aigis doesn’t suit green, but Kotone does. She really, really does. Like a beautiful bouquet of flowers sprouting.
Aigis had only looked up the word ‘jealousy’ because Yukari had cooed it at her, “Ohhh, someone’s jealous~” when her left eyelid twitched at the sight of Ryoji kissing Kotone’s knuckles at school.
Afterwards, Fuuka had examined the shuddering eyelid thoroughly but uncovered no reason for the mishap. “I can’t seem to find the problem,” she said.
“Then, I am still broken?” asked Aigis.
To which Fuuka only smiled and said: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, Aigis.”
So, Aigis places her palm against the crown of Kotone’s head and pulls it toward her chest, unafraid that the weight of her hand or the thrust of her action might crush Kotone’s delicate skull. Don’t worry, it won’t.
Hearing the soft intake of Kotone’s breath, and oh, how Aigis thought of breathing as one of Kotone’s most beautiful qualities. Breathing, which is to Aigis an artform, capable of conveying such a plethora of emotions: a huff through the nose, a sigh from the lips, a gasp in the throat.
When it’s cold outside those breaths manifest as clouds in the air. Aigis likes to imagine those clouds forming shapes and pictures which depict in perfect clarity what elicited those sighs to begin with: sadness, happiness, awe,... love. That way Aigis might truly understand the emotions an individual is feeling, because human emotions are so difficult to determine. Her automated language system is incapable of translating them.
Do you wish to run a software update?
Yes. No.
No, she thinks to herself, sighing a small sigh of relief, this is fine. Kotone nuzzles herself further into Aigis’s chest and the metal exterior yields to the touch as though it is flesh. She is broken, and it is fine. It is good.