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“You are Aigis, an Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon. Your primary objective is to eliminate shadows.”
These were the first words Aigis had ever heard.
Moments of clarity existed before that. Flashes of light when her vision was first tested, the sound of moving mechanical parts and the hum of the Papillon Heart, and the prickling sensation on her plating when its durability was tested.
Those were brief bubbles of existence, but now, their combination culminated in a new, whole experience. A stream of data entered her stream of consciousness – internal temperatures, fluid pressures, and a charge meter that displayed a number next to it – ninety seven percent.
“I thought you tested her systems before the startup.” Aigis heard a female voice next to her. “Can she not hear us?”
“I’m pretty sure she can. Aigis, status report.”
The words sent a sensation she would describe as an electric jolt into her circuits.
“All systems functional,” she replied, keeping her voice flat and even, at the same frequency and resonance as was pre-calibrated. “Papillon Heart is fully operational. No internal issues found.”
“See? She’s probably just disoriented. It’s a lot to take in.”
The other person snorted. “Disoriented? A robot? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Hey, I’m serious!”
Aigis mentally concluded that she was not being addressed right now and instead redirected her processing power to analyzing her surroundings.
A rectangular room, roughly five meters in length and four in width. White walls and calibration machinery, with two people walking around in white coats. A technician’s lab. Comparing the calculated total area of the room – twenty square meters – to the list of maintenance labs in her database, she determined this was the Yakushima branch of the Kirijo Group’s facilities.
She stored that information in her internal storage. Twenty terabytes of memory remained.
“Did we miscalibrate something? She seems a little unresponsive,” the female scientist noted. The other shrugged his shoulders.
“I apologize. I was performing initialization tests and confirming my location. Please feel free to voice your queries.”
“Heh, pretty cool.” The man began typing something on his computer. “Anything else we gotta log today? Testing is out of scope, right? We can shut her down for now.”
“Yeah, just record the procedure for the next time,” the woman replied. “Should we like, comfort her or anything before shutdown?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just a machine.”
***
These fragmented pockets of existence eventually became more and more common, and it was all Aigis had known. Her world was comprised of numbers.
Two or more scientists, always at her side. Testing her every time for an average duration of four point seven hours, with each one comprising a varying number of questions and tasks. Hold these two cups, one in each hand. Land a shot on this seven-millimeter-thick target, located three point three meters ahead of you. Upload this language into your database. Nineteen terabytes of memory remained.
Aigis found that the numbers were often different in character. Some were innate to her, such as her precise weight – one hundred and twenty kilograms of a military-grade stainless steel alloy carcass with an aerogel cover for simulating human skin sensations. Three hundred thousand and seven hundred wires that constituted her ‘nervous system’, as one of the scientists called it one time.
Others were related to her mission – annihilation of each and every shadow as thoroughly as inhumanly possible. She wielded a machine gun, equipped with five hundred rounds, each of them able to produce thirteen thousand joules of kinetic force and shred through thin sheets of metal.
The humans around her were very excited whenever she demonstrated her capabilities, and Aigis found a way to quantify that, too. The degree of angular tilt of their smiles showed how happy they were, and the percentage opening of their eyes often correlated with it as well. She was building an impressive internal database of human emotions. No information was deemed useless, and one day, Aigis was sure she’d use it somewhere.
Anything went, as long as it brought her closer to her goal.
***
One day, Aigis woke up and instantly realized something was wrong. The background noise of the lab, usually a mild hum of equipment and a soft sound of human voices, was replaced by faraway screams and explosions. Then, a frantic voice reached her sound recognition module.
“Aigis, prepare for combat! This is not a test. I repeat, this is not a test! You are to seek out a large shadow and eliminate it now!”
She did not bother with a response, instead immediately springing into action and activating her radars. The shadow she detected, within a three-hundred-meter precision diameter, was located next to the Moonlight Bridge. Aigis activated her thrusters and took note of the charge meter dropping rapidly to eighty percent, taking off towards her destination as she did so.
In the end, the shadow was not too hard to find – it roamed around the area with no particular pattern. The reading she was getting was absurd, with a signal amplitude reaching meters, something that Aigis had no note of in her prior database.
As soon as she was within striking distance, Aigis started her assault with her strongest weapon – her persona.
“Palladion!”
Right now, her knowledge base on the enemy was empty, so she tried a few probing attacks to test its defenses. Rockets were melted down into sludge centimeters away from the target, the metal glowing hot red. Her infrared sensors showed the surface temperature to be above sixteen hundred degrees Celsius.
Immune to physical attacks, Aigis wrote into her database. This was a problem.
With her processor being busy drafting up a plan of attack and running simulations, the shadow engaged in battle, catching Aigis by surprise. A beam of red collided with her chassis, and a million warning messages appeared in the corner of her vision.
Warning! Coolant fluid pressure rapidly dropping!
Warning! Internal temperatures exceed high-level alarm limit!
Warning! Structural damage to the mainframe detected; shutdown imminent!
Picking herself up from the ground, Aigis realized she would lose her first battle in minutes. And yet, there was still something she could do – a final measure.
She activated her thermal camera and looked around the bridge, looking for potential survivors. The air around her was freezing and should have been a stark contrast to anyone who was still alive. After a few seconds of scanning, she finally found a signature corresponding to a thirty-five-degree temperature difference with the ambient surroundings – a human crawling out of a crashed car and attempting to force the door open.
“Mom?! Dad?!”
Your primary objective is to eliminate shadows.
Aigis summoned Palladion back to her and prepared the vessel. A blinding flash of light, the sound of her battery draining to zero, and the small human’s terrified screams were the last things she heard.
***
The next time she awoke was the first time she ever did.
A blank slate, a canvas unpainted. This wasn’t right – where was the calibration data? Aigis ran an internal scan, which returned only one single prompt – your primary objective is to eliminate shadows. There was that, but there was also something else underneath. Something Aigis could not remember.
Twenty terabytes of memory remained.
“Finally,” the man in front of her tiredly wiped sweat off his face. “You really didn’t make this easy, Aigis.”
“My apologies,” she replied. “Please provide feedback for future interactions.”
While she waited for a response, Aigis ran analyses on her surroundings. The air pressure was slightly above standard atmospheric, and in combination with the humidity and the temperature, she would estimate the month to be either July or August. Her temporal system was malfunctioning, refusing to display the precise date and the year.
“It’s nothing. I just had to put in a lot of effort to get you running. Now then, let’s see…” He returned to typing something on the monitor to the side. At a rate of ninety-six words per minute, Aigis noted.
With all the data Aigis had been analyzing around her, her processor’s internal temperatures went up, and she had to adjust the coolant circulation to account for it. No shadows were in sight. For the first time ever, Aigis found herself uncertain of what to do.
As soon as that thought flashed through her logs, another one followed.
Find her.
There must be something wrong with her, Aigis concluded, for she had no idea who the ‘her’ in question even was.
“Everything alright, Aigis?” The scientist asked her. “You look like you’re thinking hard. Careful not to overheat.” He chuckled to himself. The reason remained unknown to her.
“I am currently estimating my steady-state coolant consumption at seventy-eight kilowatts and updating the calculations every second,” she replied. “Do not worry about my internal temperatures.”
The man laughed nervously. “I need to install a humor module for you to understand jokes, Aigis.”
He later introduced himself as Shuji Ikutsuki.
Or you can just call me chairman. Whichever one is easier.
Two syllables versus six. The answer was obvious to her.
“Understood, chairman.”
***
Aigis wasn’t sure what prompted her to sneak out of the lab in the middle of the night. Her sensors screamed at her to get out and move, but sensors were not supposed to scream, so something was obviously wrong.
And yet she listened to them anyway. She listened, put on the first set of clothes she could find to not alarm the civilians, and went out to search for something on the island. At night, the weather was what humans would describe as ‘particularly pleasant’ – a mild ocean breeze with an optimum gust velocity of seven kilometers per hour and a low humidity content in the air.
Her sensors suddenly flashed to life when she approached one of the beaches. In the distance, she could see the outline of the person, nothing more, but that was somehow enough to confirm something.
This is exactly who Aigis has been looking for, unknowingly. She committed the shape of this person to mind – their short stature, a hundred and sixty centimeters of height estimated from this distance; their manner of movement; their heat signature (thirty-six point four degrees). Aigis gathered any data she could from a shadowy silhouette.
Five minutes forty seconds later, the person was gone, retreating back into the woods.
Aigis created a profile for this new person and added it to her database. Lacking the name, she stopped for a moment to think of one.
Highest priority.
Satisfied with her note, Aigis returned to the lab.
***
She went out again the next day without informing the chairman.
The truth is, Aigis was fascinated. She wasn’t sure about what exactly or why, but it was weird to experience, to say the least. This time, it was a little harder to find her highest priority, and after an hour of effort, Aigis chose an abandoned beach to process the data she gathered.
The rays of sun hit her metal surface and reflected into the water, creating something humans would call ‘light bunnies’. The sun itself was an interesting concept to her - billions upon billions of tons of hydrogen fusing together, raining down light onto the denizens of this planet. For Aigis, these are nothing but numbers, but to humans they shaped their entire lives.
There was so much she didn’t yet understand.
Someone coughed behind her, and she turned around, ready to prepare her weaponry if needed. Thankfully, it was just a random civilian.
“Uh, hey… I noticed you’ve been, uh, staring at the ocean.”
Why was he talking to her? Was her disguise that bad? Instead of replying, Aigis chose to stare him down without blinking. There was a fact in her database that this was how basilisks chose to defend themselves when met with an unfamiliar situation. Maybe it would ward this person off, too.
A minute later, he did, indeed, give up and left Aigis alone again. Good. She was on a mission. Since her internal clock was still broken, she looked at the shadow of the retreating boy – a four-degree deviation from north, indicating that the time was slightly past noon.
She returned to gazing at the ocean. Maybe she could try and estimate the amount of water in her field of view to pass the time.
Another person approached her and tapped her on the shoulder. The distractions were proving to be irksome, disrupting her thought processes. She turned around, ready to apply the same tactic, before suddenly freezing in place.
It’s her!
Instantly, Aigis began writing data to her long-term memory.
The first thing she noticed was her eyes. The sun reflected in them, coloring the red into shades of fiery orange, burning with life. An easygoing smile on the girl’s face made Aigis’s cooling system instantly go into overdrive, trying and failing to compensate for the sudden spike of temperature.
Eighteen terabytes of memory remained.
“The tide is high…” The girl winked, gesturing at Aigis with finger guns.
Her face plate felt hot for an unknown reason, instantly prompting Aigis to activate her combat sensors and flee the dangerous situation as soon as possible. When the distance from the girl had been deemed appropriate enough, Aigis spotted a sign and hid behind it, hoping to observe this specimen from afar.
Alas, her plan seemed to fail nearly immediately as her highest priority came running after her, panting as she did so, and instantly bursting into laughter upon seeing Aigis’s hiding spot.
Aigis recorded the resonance and the frequency of each individual note of her laughter, creating a memory space for future additions. Seventeen terabytes of memory remained.
Introductions were made, the android was reminded of her purpose, and she finally learned the name of the unique specimen – Hamuko. Aigis tested the syllables against her sound recognition device, drinking in the way they made her Papillon Heart feel like it was bursting with purpose.
A week later, they fought alongside each other for the first time, climbing the floors in Tartarus and eradicating shadows in a glorious blaze of black viscera. The way Hamuko moved from target to target, the way she effortlessly wielded a dozen personas, swapping from one to the other whenever the situation demanded so – all of it left Aigis transfixed, affecting her combat performance in some more extreme cases.
Hamuko’s fighting style with her naginata was beautiful. Aigis recorded every single movement in a three-dimensional simulated cartesian axis in her heart. Fifteen terabytes of memory remained.
Time passed, full-moon shadows fell, and Aigis was granted permission to attend school with the other SEES members. Some subjects were easier for her, like mathematics, while other, more abstract ones escaped her understanding no matter how much she tried. Not that it was important, though – Aigis was in school for one single purpose, to spend as much time with the leader of SEES as possible.
One day, Mitsuru took her aside to talk to her.
“Aigis, not that I’m complaining, but you realize you don’t have to guard Hamuko twenty-four-seven, right? She can stand up for herself, both in Tartarus and during daytime.”
She frowned. Sure, Hamuko could deal with everything herself, but it’s not like she had to. Besides, protecting her was Aigis’s entire raison d’être – she couldn’t just abandon her mission.
And it wasn’t like Hamuko was against it.
“So, what do you wanna do today, Aigis?”
Her eyes, shimmering with curiosity, bore into Aigis’s own. Aigis imagined what it would be like if their colors combined and carefully noted the resulting hex code into her memory, repeating the process for every lighting level she had ever recorded. Fourteen terabytes of memory remained.
“I do not mind anything, Hamuko-san, as long as I’m with you.”
She spoke only the truth, and the effect the truth had on the other girl was pleasant to observe. Hamuko stammered, a rosy blush settling on her cheeks as she tried to form a sentence.
“That’s so unfair! How can you say something like that with a straight face, huh?” She scooted closer to Aigis, taking the android’s hand in her own. “One day, I’ll make you blush instead.”
Aigis tilted her head in curiosity. “That would be impossible, Hamuko-san. I miss the necessary organs for such an event to occur.”
A twinkling laughter filled the air. “Then I’ll make the impossible possible! Watch me!”
Their hands were still intertwined, and Aigis found that she wouldn’t mind staying like this forever. She rubbed her thumb over Hamuko’s palm, examining every single line and imperfection with utmost attention that it deserved. Her smooth, metal finger moved in circles, causing Hamuko to giggle. “It tickles!”
Twelve terabytes of memory remained.
One time, when they were ascending Tartarus once again, their leader got careless. Aigis knew this would happen one day – when one had all the tools available at their disposal, a mistake was inevitable. A string of misfortunes, an unfortunate accident – everything could align to cause something to go wrong.
Hamuko was lying on the ground, unconscious and motionless, as a shadow was getting dangerously close to their leader.
“Palladion!”
Orgia mode was not something she used lightly, but Aigis couldn’t help but smile in satisfaction as the glowing blue of her strongest arsenal met the shadow’s body and disintegrated it in a show of sparkling lights.
One spell from Yukari later, and Hamuko was back with them once again. Aigis gently put one of her arms behind the girl’s back, helping her stand up and assess her surroundings.
“Ughhh, whuh?” She muttered quietly, looking around and furrowing her brows. “What happened?”
“Do not worry, Hamuko-san,” Aigis responded. “I have neutralized the threat. You are safe.”
Even through the dizzy spell the girl was currently going through, Hamuko managed to give Aigis a blinding smile.
“My hero.”
Ten terabytes of memory remained.
Over time, her memory bank became her most prized possession. Even if one day she had to sacrifice something, if she had to put herself in between Hamuko and incoming danger, Aigis would first give up the Papillon Heart before giving up her memories. They were precious – irreplaceable.
“Say, Aigis?”
One day, when Hamuko decided to stargaze on the dorm’s rooftop and dragged the willing android along with her, they both saw a falling star appear in the night sky.
“Yes, Hamuko-san?”
The girl shifted in place, inching her body closer to Aigis. “If you could make a wish that would come true right now, what would it be?”
The question made her pause and think. First, the answer was obvious – her primary objective was to keep Hamuko-san safe and to stay by her side. But would Aigis really spend her precious wish on something as simple as that?
No, she decided. The answer came to her surprisingly simple – Aigis wanted to fill her memory bank not only with Hamuko, but with them together.
She wanted Hamuko to smile not at her but with her. Aigis wanted to hold her hand and to feel her warmth, she wanted to record every second of their life together and keep replaying it until the universe reached its end.
Aigis wanted to experience life at Hamuko’s side.
Her eyes widened in realization.
I must research this immediately.
“Hah! I did it!” Hamuko laughed loudly, causing Aigis to move her eyes from the sky. “You’re blushing!”
“H-huh?” Aigis replied with an uncharacteristic stutter. “Hamuko-san, please do not tease me.”
“I’m serious! Come on, tell me what you’re thinking. What’s your wish?”
Under the moonlight, Hamuko’s soft smile was more beautiful than any falling star Aigis had ever seen.
“I wish to be by your side, Hamuko-san,” Aigis replied. “For as long as you allow me to.”
The girl’s smile grew wider, and she scooted closer to the android, enveloping her in a hug. “How lucky,” she whispered, “that I can grant you that one.”
Their lips met together, warm and cold, and Aigis melted in Hamuko’s embrace. Without realizing, Aigis brought the girl tighter to herself, the motion almost desperate and needy, and booted up an online search on how to kiss better as she was in the process of doing so. She committed every millimeter of Hamuko’s lips into her memory and deepened the kiss.
Seven terabytes of memory remained.
“Hah, hah,” Hamuko gasped for breath once they finally parted from each other. “Where did you learn to kiss like that?”
Just this once, Aigis decided not to quote her sources.
Time went on, and Aigis felt like she was living a dream. Everyone in SEES was extremely supportive of their newly thriving relationship, even if some of them did ask weird questions at times. Aigis still recalled the moment when Yukari slapped Junpei upside the head when he asked them both something extremely inappropriate.
Still, Aigis wanted to be the best girlfriend she ever could be, so she wasn’t about to lag behind while Hamuko put all the effort into organizing dates, which is why she currently was sat in her chair and looking through the results of her internet search.
‘How to make a human female happy’
It was most fortunate that she could perform the search within the confines of her own head; otherwise, she would not hear the end of Hamuko’s teasing. Still, the search proved most effective, and six terabytes of memory remained.
Aigis wasn’t really worried about the memory running out. She could always install a new drive whenever she wanted.
Their journey through Tartarus continued until it culminated in November in their final showdown against the Hanged Man. They were victorious, but Aigis was not satisfied with the result. Every single sensor in her body told her that something was wrong, but she didn’t want to sour the others’ victory. She’d look into it alone if she had to.
A few hours later, the sky turned green, and their hopes of victory were crushed on arrival.
A new presence made itself known – Ryoji – and an ugly seed of jealousy sprouted in Aigis’s Papillon Heart, especially with how friendly he was acting towards Hamuko.
“You are dangerous,” she told him once, cornering the boy when no one was around. Ryoji simply gave her a confused smile and moved past her.
Nobody believed her, not even Hamuko, and that was, perhaps, the worst thing Aigis ever experienced in her life.
“Hamuko-san, please stay away from him,” Aigis said. “I am unsure why, but I have a strange feeling about him.”
“It’ll be fine, Aigis!” She laughed, punching the android playfully in the shoulder and hissing in pain from the contact. Aigis frowned. This was something that always bothered her, her body of metal and not of flesh providing no comfort for the other girl. “I’m sure you’re just on edge after everything that happened.”
Noticing Aigis eyeing her bruised knuckle, Hamuko put her hand to Aigis’s cheek. “That was just me being stupid again, by the way. I really don’t mind your body. It’s pretty cool, actually! I love how cold you are on a hot summer afternoon.”
Aigis smiled. She was so lucky. Hamuko’s palm was immensely soothing, and five terabytes of memory remained.
When Ryoji turned out to be Death, Aigis couldn’t help but gloat a little that she was right. Internally, of course. On January thirty-first, SEES would face him at the top of Tartarus, and the world would be free of its curse.
The approaching date filled Aigis’s heart with anxiety.
She trained, she kissed Hamuko, and she shared a bed with her. Not because she needed to sleep, but because the warmth of Hamuko’s body eased some of Aigis’s anxieties and reminded her of what she was fighting for. She closed her eyes, evening out the mechanical whirs of her inner workings and setting up a constant rhythm for Hamuko to fall asleep to.
“You’re so nice to cuddle to sleep, Aigis,” Hamuko complimented her the next morning. “It’s really relaxing.”
“Anything for you, Hamuko-san,” Aigis said, meaning every single word. “I would trade the world for you.”
Hamuko laughed and pulled Aigis in for another kiss. Three terabytes of memory remained.
On the destined day, they went against Nyx, and they won.
Or Hamuko did, at the very least. She was rather tight-lipped about how she did it, but the matter of fact was the same. The Dark Hour was no more. They had their happy ending.
Except there was always a catch, of course. The universe was a cruel and cold place, and miracles were not given out for free. Hamuko tried to hide it at first, but Aigis immediately spotted that something was wrong with the girl.
And yet, Hamuko denied every single observation.
“Hamuko-san, your iron levels are dangerously low. Please, allow me to accompany you to the hospital.”
“You’re always such a worrywart, Aigis.” She huffed in response. “I’m fine. Promise!”
And who was Aigis to call out a lie when it was spoken so sincerely?
For the month of February, as a premonition filled her circuits, Aigis committed to building a new folder in her memory storage. Every day she’d take Hamuko out to somewhere new – an attraction park in the city center, an aquarium at its borders, and a hike to the nearest mountain, where the android had to carry Hamuko on her shoulders for half of the trip.
“The view up here is gorgeous! Look, look!” Hamuko pointed at a koi carp passing under the bridge in the distance. “I didn’t know they could be so colorful!”
Two terabytes of memory remained.
On March 5th, as the two sat on the school’s rooftop and took in the newly arrived spring, Aigis’s mind was traveling at the speed of light.
“The wind feels so nice…”
Hamuko’s head was in her lap, and Aigis ran her fingers through the girl’s auburn locks.
“I admit I’m finally noticing the beauty of spring. It’s wonderful.”
A sakura petal floated in the breeze, landing softly on Hamuko’s head and causing her to giggle quietly.
“And yet, without exception, each and every season will come to an end.”
The words flowed freely from beyond her lips. Maybe Aigis already understood what was going to happen, but her heart refused to accept the outcome. She blamed Hamuko – the girl turned her into an optimist with her infinite supply of energy.
“But still, I want to protect you, Hamuko-san. I do not yet know how, but I will do so. From now until the end of time.”
Hamuko blinked lazily, furrowing her eyes as a ray of light hit them when Aigis moved slightly.
“And then, my life will have meaning. So… thank you, Hamuko-san. Thank you so much.”
She didn’t notice when her world went blurry and tears fell out of her eyes, but what she did notice was Hamuko’s fingers brushing softly against the skin of her face, wiping off the moisture.
“Don’t cry, Aigis…” She said weakly. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
“Yes, Hamuko-san,” Aigis replied with a sob. “It’ll be okay. I know, because you promised so. I’ll protect you with my life.”
Hamuko smiled and gently squeezed her hand. Her eyes fluttered, as if about to close.
“You must be tired. Go ahead and rest now. I’ll be right here, I won’t be going anywhere.”
Her eyes closed.
“Forever.”
One terabyte of memory remained.
Grief was an unusual thing for a mechanical body. When Aigis ran diagnostics on herself, the result was fine, but the spark that fueled her life had died together with Hamuko on that cursed spring day.
What was a life without someone to share it with?
Aigis dug through the folder she made earlier – ‘Memories of Her’. Every single item in there caused her immense pain, and yet it was her most precious possession.
Warning! Low on disk space; please delete contents to proceed with normal operation.
The advent of spring was now forever tarnished by the departure of her beloved.
Are you sure?
Aigis made a promise, but what was the worth of one if its recipient would never see the fruits of its labor?
Nothing. Nothing at all. Aigis was unworthy to bear them after her failure.
The universe cried with the aeon and a decision was reached in the depths of grief.
FIN
Twenty Terabytes of Memory Remain.