aigis app for entranceway

[segues]

Name: Justyne
DW username: segues
E-Mail: lovesnotwisely@gmail.com
IM: BattleToasters

Other Characters: n/a

Character Name: Aigis
Series: Persona 3
Timeline: Post-Answer
Canon Resource Link: Wiki!
Character Background:

How do you "briefly" explain a 100+ hour game. Oh god.

Aigis was created on September 10th, 1999 by the Kirijo Group for a singular purpose: fighting Shadows--monstrous creatures that feed on human emotions. She was trained and taught to believe this was the only thing that mattered in her life... and, really, it was. Aigis was a machine, and all machines are made with a purpose. Even if they're misused or defective, machines were originally created to do one thing or another. Aigis was a part of a line of anti-shadow tactical weapons given human form and emotion in order to give them the ability of Persona, a magical summoning of someone's "true self" that, when summoned, can give them the power to overcome life's obstacles. Personas were the only things truly capable of defeating shadows, which had become a problem for the Kirijo Group, as they were harnessing the Shadows' power to mess with time... or so they said. I'll get back to that later.

As I said, Aigis was a part of a line of humanoid tactical weapons. Aigis was the only one of her entire line to survive. In November of 1999, a catastrophic explosion at the Kirijo Group's labs caused the Dark Hour and freed the thirteenth Shadow--Death. Aigis was deployed in order to destroy it, and she faced against Death for the first time on Moonlight Bridge. Unfortunately, Aigis just didn't have the power to defeat Death, so, instead, she found a young boy among the wreckage of the cars on the bridge and sealed Death within him, before entering a ten year sleep.

I WILL PAUSE NOW and explain the Dark Hour and Tartarus because they are things. And they'll be important later. The Dark Hour is basically a hidden hour (or, gameplay wise, a hidden howeverlongyoufeellikegrinding) that falls exactly at midnight, Japan time, where everything is frozen, machines don't work, the moon is green and everything's covered in either blood or cranberry juice. Tartarus is not toothpaste but a tower that rises out of Gekkoukan High School in the Dark Hour and works as a nest for Shadows--it's where most of them are located, except for the stray handful that get onto the streets of Iwatodai. The only people able to function in the Dark Hour, or see Tartarus are people with something called the "Potential," which means the potential to summon a Persona. Anyone else awake in that hour will be devoured by Shadows. Also there is a dog. And a robot. The robot is special. That is the only reason given to the fact that she works in the Dark Hour. The Kirijo Group kicked logic to the curb. But that's it. I should also explain Apathy Syndrome which turns people basically into vegetables. It's caused by Shadows in the Dark Hour sucking emotions out of them or something, and people will literally just stand there and you can bother them in the game and they just go ".... uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh..." There's one by the dorm that creeps me the hell out. ANYWAY NOT IMPORTANT.

SO TEN YEARS LATER. A group of kids with the Potential has gotten together to fight the Shadows in the Dark Hour. But they're on a vacation when Aigis wakes up and escapes from the lab where they're vacationing (convenient!!!!) and ends up on the beach, right in the path of Akihiko, Junpei and Minato attempting a bet to see who can pick up the most chicks. These are our heroes. Even worse, none of them can. After a wacky misunderstanding and chase scene, Aigis tells Minato she wants to be with him, and that he's the most important thing. This is Aigis' actual introduction in the game, as everything before is explained later in the story. Though Aigis is cute, she's clueless and very robotic. Little of her personality goes beyond what's been programmed into her, and that part is her desire to be with Minato.

She's drawn to Minato because he's the boy she shoved Death into all those years ago. She doesn't recognize it though, as all her memories seem to be gone. After working with the leader of the kids with the Potential (henceforth, the group shall be known as SEES), Aigis is assigned to help them fight the Shadows.

Upon returning to Iwatodai, Aigis has some problems fitting in. She's not used to human terminology, nor is she used to the manners most humans have around each other. She wants to stay in Minato's room, to watch him in the night, but she's told she can't. She sneaks in at night anyway. She signs up for school to be closer to him, but can't quite grasp the concept of a uniform, repeatedly calling it camouflage. She doesn't quite pass as human, really, but she... gets along in school and continues to help SEES out in fights at night.

In the months between their joining and the defeat of the twelve major Shadows, Aigis grows. She becomes more aware of herself, more in control of her emotions, and more human. She comes to really like Minato as Minato, not just for what she was drawn to him by. She learns loss and sorrow as well as happiness and gain. Aigis gets rid of her own AI shortcomings and becomes, mentally, a girl, though not physically. She still makes mistakes, and she's still a little off, but she grows.

In November, upon the defeat of the twelfth major Shadow, the truth of the plot is revealed. The Chairman of the school and adviser of SEES has been working for a totally different plan as the rest--he has been wanting to bring the Fall. He reprograms Aigis to kill all of SEES, to use them as sacrifices to bring the Fall early. Aigis goes along with the plan, subduing and binding them in Tartarus, until she is confronted with killing Minato. Despite her programming and her orders, Aigis herself can't bring herself to hurt him. She ignores her very programming and saves SEES, being called a defective machine, but not in time to save Mitsuru's father who arrived with the teens.

After this terrible ordeal, a new student shows up at Gekkoukan, and Aigis immediately dislikes him. Ryoji Mochizuki is actually Death, who was released from Minato after the defeat of the 12th Shadow. She constantly calls him dangerous, though SEES seems to ignore this. Later, though, in a battle on Moonlight Bridge, where it all began, Aigis faces off against Ryoji again. She regains her memories, aware of what he is and what she is and what she nearly "died" trying to do last time. Still, she faces off against him, stating that his defeat is her only purpose.

She loses and is damaged so badly she's out of commission for a month.

When Aigis comes back, she's different. She thinks she's a failure, remarks that even if she was completely destroyed, she could be rebuilt, and laments that she did something awful to Minato. She's really torn up over what occurred on the bridge ten years prior. Aigis asks Minato to kill Ryoji (which will slow the coming of the fall and erase SEES's memories) because she doesn't like to see the team in pain. She doesn't like the idea of them suffering to an end that is seemingly inevitable. Aigis' struggle with her two sides--the side which is a robot, that was programmed for a single thing; and the side which is human, whose emotions and ideas have been nurtured and strengthened by SEES and fortified by her care for them--breaks here. Aigis' struggle for purpose continues the rest of the game, but here she makes the decision to choose for herself, rather than let her programming control her. She makes her stand here, to go down fighting, just like the rest of SEES. She casts aside the idea that she can only be a machine, can only be useless in her purpose, that she can't do a thing for her friends, not even shed a tear. Aigis achieves her resolution, and her Persona, previously Palladion, gives rise to Athena (a palladium or palladion being an object, and Athena being a living being. very symbolic, you see).

Minato makes the decision to fight. Aigis spends the month between her awakening and the coming battle learning about the world, learning about living and learning about herself. She learns about death and life, and comes to care even more for Minato (lamenting that she can't have a relationship with him in the same way that Yukari, Mitsuru or Fuuka can), SEES, and the whole world. But mostly Minato.

In the final battle, after defeating the Nyx Avatar, Aigis watches Minato go to fight Nyx, who is bringing the Fall, on his own and fights against the air itself, struggling so hard her pieces start to fall off. When he returns, Aigis is so relieved she cries. Take that, not having tear ducts.

Unfortunately, then, everyone for gets for a couple months what happened. Except Aigis. Who sits there. Alone in having memories. Stalking people. Until graduation day. On graduation day, she finds out Minato remembers as well. As Mitsuru gives the graduation speech, Aigis sits with him on the roof, his head in her lap, and speaks with him. She tells him how all she wants in her life is to protect him and care for him. She tells him that she will always be by his side, and that she can be, since she is an undying machine. Where he had become a shoulder to lean on for so many others, Aigis wants to be a support for him.

And then he essentially dies in her arms.

Aigis is so torn when she realizes that he won't wake, she locks herself away from everything and everyone. She wishes her humanity, the part of her that learned both happiness and sadness, away. She can't bear to live without Minato. She isn't even there when his heart stops beating. So her humanity separates from her and becomes Metis, her "sister." And SEES, trapped in their grief, enter a time loop of a single day--the last day they can live in the dormitory.

Throughout the events of the Answer, Aigis learns how each of her teammates became Persona users, and why time has stopped. In order to move on (after a series of fights because SEES cannot just sit down and talk out their problems without Yukari having a fit), they opt to view what, exactly, happened. And they find out why Minato had to die--he sealed away Nyx, yes, to protect her from Erebus, the embodiment of the world's wish only to end, every human's occasional wish to die. They find out that Nyx is not the danger, it's humanity's own inability to deal with the negative aspects of life. They defeat Erebus, but know that it will eventually rise again, before Metis returns to Aigis, and SEES returns to the original flow of time.

When SEES returns to the dorm, however, Aigis has seemed to completely and totally short out, her body damaged beyond repair. Fuuka says even if they did repair her, it wouldn't be Aigis that came back. Her circuits are completely fried. But she gets right back up as if nothing's wrong. Aigis is no longer functional as a robot.

The game ends with Aigis moving in with Yukari and promising that she will do her best to make the world no longer need to wish for death, so Minato will no longer be relentlessly attacked by Erebus. Maybe, someday, she hopes that he won't need to act as a seal any longer.

That's just the short version. I could talk for pages about this. You don't want that trust me.

I'M SORRY THIS SEEMS REALLY LONG AND RAMBLING and kind of goofy. I promise I take playing her far more seriously than this. It's just. So many plotholes, Persona 3. I love you but stop.

Abilities/Special Powers:

Aigis is a Robot, and she can summon multiple Personas, thanks to the Wild Card ability. She's weak to lightning, but strong against what could be considered a piercing attack (a bullet wound, arrow, or rapier strike). She can talk to animals.

Third-Person Sample:

It was nothing like the beach at home. That was Aigis' first thought as she stared out at the sea. It wasn't like the beach at Yakushima, either, but neither of those things really surprised her. Though her sphere of knowledge had been small when it came to the world, she knew that even in Japan, each beach would have it's own distinct touches. No two would be exactly the same, even if they were similar. Wonderland? Well, there seemed to be an entirely different set of rules in this place, and it wasn't exactly a comfort to her.

She missed Iwatodai. It was hard not to miss the city that had become her home. It was especially hard considering it seemed that she had just learned the rules, there, and now it was time to learn a new set. It was frustrating to think that there wasn't a thing she could do to get back there. The idea seemed to stick in her throat that it was just another time when she had failed at her purpose. She couldn't stop death, couldn't defeat the shadows, couldn't stay by Minato's side. She wasn't even in the right world to try to ease Minato's burden. The frown on her mouth finally relaxed as she turned away from the sea. This wouldn't be the same way.

Aigis had maybe a second chance here. A place where she wasn't already defined by the choices she had made, and the missions she had failed. It wasn't that she had any desire to forget what had happened to her. It just might have been a little easier to continue working toward being happy, or even to making others happy when she didn't feel the weight of Tartarus, Nyx, the Fall and the Abyss of Time weighing so heavily on her shoulders, so recently passed.

It was a knowledge deep inside of her that she should remember to smile. Remember to be happy. The fact she still lived was only because the person dearest to her gave his life. She could offer a smile in return for that, at least. She owed him that much, even if she wasn't home.

First-Person Sample:

[The blonde's voice sounds confident at first, as if she's used to being in strange, maybe unexplainable situations. She stands confidently, too, her shoulders back and her head tilted just slightly to the side.] Excuse me, please. I am sure this is a question that is often asked, but I still would like to know... what, exactly, is going on? I am not quite certain as to how I came to be here. I have heard tales of... Wonderland... where I am from, but I have never had the chance to truly study them. [Hey only been alive a year okay? And whatever she knows is sooooo skewed by a certain Persona. Still, she looks away as if embarrassed.]

If there is anything I should know about this place, I would appreciate the information. I will need to get back to my friends, if possible... they will worry about me. And I have something very important I need to do. I know it must be common to hear such things, but I need to know so I may return as soon as possible.