The Games app

[notjustamachine]

OUT of CHARACTER

Name: Mox

Other characters: None!

IN CHARACTER
Name: Aigis
Fandom: Persona 3
Canon point/AU: Panem AU
Journal: notjustamachine
PB: Canon and fanart, for now.

History: Canon history
As AU:
Obviously as a Panem AU, Aigis is not a robot, and she was not built to fight shadows. Instead, at the very young age of two, she was volunteered by her parents to join a hardcore training program for future tributes. She doesn’t remember anything about them except their parting words that they will be so proud of her one day, and to be a good girl and do as she’s told.

Aigis is a gentle soul that wants other people to be happy, at heart, so she takes that request and holds it close, obeying everything that was asked of her. She’s a protégé among her peers, resourceful and athletic, and the constant praise she receives as a young girl only solidifies her obedience. She is trained heavily in martial arts, gymnastics, ad the use of multiple weapons. Intensive training in survival on minimal food, water, and basic survival skills rounds out her schedule.

As she grows older, the tests and training get tougher and meaner, and her coaches and mentors grow colder. Her fate has been sealed already, her desire to please and her desperation to make them proud of her setting the nails in the coffin of her morality. It’s a struggle, for a while, knowing that what she’s training to do is to kill, and knowing that she has no worth to any of them outside of that goal. She wants to make people happy, protect them, be good… but what being ‘good’ means is complicated at best.

The only real friend she remembers having in that time was her much elder sibling, Labrys, who was volunteered into the program before her. Labrys had also maintained her gentle heart deep within despite her conditioning, and the sight of her baby sister was enough to melt down some of the barriers. They had a brief but powerful connection, and Labrys’ bravery left an impression on Aigis that could never be wiped away. Aigis watched raptly when Labrys volunteered at 17 for her arena, when Aigis was 7. Labrys lasted into the final four before finally losing to a trap set by one of the other tributes. Labrys’ death was a turning point for Aigis in many ways. It was the start of her truly shutting her emotions down for the sake of her own survival, and the end of her outward expressions. The day after she watched the live feed of her sisters’ death she walked into the training facility and announced she wanted to specialize in axes, Labrys’ weapon of choice.

Over the next years of her training the stacked trauma overtakes her and she shuts emotional responses down completely. By the time she’s old enough to be reaped at all she’s been transformed into a merciless killing machine with extensive survival knowledge, the perfect tribute. The last few years of her training involve a little bit of coaching in how to get sponsors, but it was almost as if her handlers had forgotten that part in favor of the far more exciting task of training her for combat. In the end, her deadpan logic is used to build a persona around her by her stylist that works to her advantage.

At Aigis’ seventeenth year reaping, she volunteers and states for all of Panem that she will win for her sister.


Presentation: Aigis’s emotional development is stunted, to say the least. All of her interactions with other people for as long as she could remember were all about the Hunger Games. Surviving, fighting, and winning were her bread butter and water. By the time she’s crowned as victor, she has had no real interaction with others that could be described as normal or healthy. As such, she presents as very cold and distant. Her responses are often clinical in their accuracy as well as overly formal. She’s used to categorizing people two ways: 1-those who she obeys, and 2- those she must overcome to succeed.

Once released into the Captial, she has had the second category removed for her completely. There are no longer other tributes she needs to outlive in order to fulfill her purpose. She’s already outlived them all. Everyone that’s left is someone she sees as a superior, someone to take orders from.

Though she will seem cold and uninterested in anyone who speaks to her, she will do basically anything that is asked of her because she has no other idea of how to interact with others. She has also been unsure of what the purpose of her life is since her victory. She was never prepared for what to do after the Games, just how to win them. She’s prone to asking very existential questions and often without warning. “What does it mean to live?” and “What is your purpose in life?” are examples. She’s almost like a little kid who has just discovered that life can have meaning, and is trying to understand how that works and what it means for her. The concept that she could potentially define her life’s meaning for herself instead of having it given to her is especially exciting.

Motivations: Her insides are very much on display in a lot of ways. The lack of expression and emotion she showed as a tribute and a victor were an accurate representation of her own emptiness. The questions she asks aren’t meant as tricks, she honestly wants to explore their answers and believes that other people besides her have answers of their own. Her unemotional act is simply that she is not used to feeling her emotions, because those are weaknesses and were not permitted. She never gleaned any sort of enjoyment or satisfaction from killing like some of the other children would do when placed under the same stresses. It’s a perfectly reasonable response to the trauma either way, but Aigis had too gentle a nature to ever learn to enjoy killing. Even if she had showed any sign of pride in her accomplishments, she would be reminded to be humble, because arrogance lost many a tribute their arena.

The only enjoyment she’s ever gotten from the Games was the small sense of pride in the tributes she helped train and mentor. There was no such risk in loss for her to be arrogant for someone else’s sake, and that often got her mentees the sponsors they needed when she could brag. She would enjoy seeing them do well, figure something out that was creative, or do particularly well with interviews, especially since she was never very good at politics. She would feel something akin to disappointment or sadness when they might fail or get hurt. These were the seeds of emotions that began to grow.

Over time, she has grown just a little bit more, and is learning how to become attached to people, how to make friends and care about others in a way that she can understand and talk about. She really wants friends, she is coming to realize. Connections with other people that are positive and based in mutual growth and aid are far more fulfilling than anything else she has experienced and she wants more of it, even if she isn’t very good at going about it just yet. Protective feelings toward her mentees is a likely route for her recovery, to learn how to develop relationships with other people, and to start to see The Games for the horror that they are.


Setting: Aigis has already spent long years steeped in The Games and without much or any agency to speak of. She is just learning how to develop agency of her own, and that maybe what happened to her wasn’t perfectly okay. Her path is one of recovery and discovery, at the point she’s starting at, though the current plot in the game itself is likely to put that on hold in some ways. She’s determined to learn how to connect with people no matter what, though, and that is starting to get her to value life in a way that’s entirely going to change her worldview.

Then, of course, her entire home district just got blown the hell up. Even if she didn’t actually spend much of her time outside of the training academy, or have much of any emotional attachment to the place or the people, Aigis has learned to value life enough that the thought of all of those people dying all at once leaves a bad taste in her mouth. With The Games, at least there’s some chance of survival, some warning and preparation, and a tradition to back it up. That? Was simple genocide, and her budding morality knows that isn’t okay. Someone is starting to harbor tiny sympathies toward rebellion. They just need a little bit of nurturing.



SAMPLES
First Person Thread:

For Capitols OCs and AUs:
[It takes her a moment to realize that she’s been spoken to. Aigis had been listening to the conversation as it happened, sure, but something someone had said sent her mind off into a tangent of thoughts. She had left the conversation far behind. Now that she’s realized she is the center of attention, her discomfort makes her forget what she had been thinking about. She asks the person to repeat the question, to a chorus of mutters and laughter that make her feel something she doesn’t quite like. Shame?]
The new games…

[She starts, thinking as she speaks. It’s an inefficient and unprofessional way to be interviewed, but she doesn’t realize that. The mutters die down in order to let her speak. Aigis fidgets without knowing why.]

They are very different from the way things were done before. [She gets into the groove of her clinical analysis and her nerves fade somewhat.] Without any actual ties to the districts they represent, the pride of representation is unavoidably cheapened.
[Murmurs increase in volume, and Aigis has to speak a little louder than comfortable to be heard. She isn’t done yet.]

However, with the ability to keep the tributes alive from arena to arena, they have become a far more renewable resource, and a greater number of Panem citizens can now enjoy the pageant of The Games without real fear of danger.

[She nods, indicating that she was now finished. It’s a neutral response: as true as it is noncommittal. Still her observations seem to be causing a buzz among the other people in the broadcast. Aigis has no idea what that means, but she feels as though she fulfilled the request, and bows out politely.

She wishes that there was someone on hand she could ask the opinion of. Was that done well enough? Has she learned anything about dealing with Capitol politics? She honestly can’t tell. With a sigh, she shuts her communicator down and goes to see if any of her mentees are in the training center.]



Prose:
Aigis hums to herself as she waits on the bench for her name to be called. It’s been a long time since she’s been here, and it looks like nothing has changed. Well, nothing about her surroundings have changed. Aigis herself is a whole new woman, and she stands with her shoulders squared with a new pride that she hadn’t let learned to have back when she was a tribute the first time around. The pride of the living, and those who have chosen their own path is the fire that fuels her now.

Perhaps she should be thinking on regrets, trying to work out how she could have kept herself safe, how she could have played it cool. Perhaps, but she won’t. Her being here is sending a message to the Capitol just as much as they think they are sending a message to her by “forcing” her back into the arena. She wants to be here, and that’s her secret weapon this time around.

She walks into the room and makes a sweeping bow to her judges. “Aigis Kirijo, Disctrict 3.” And with a flurry of action she’s grabbed the nearest and largest axe, flourishing and brandishing with a grace that proves that she has only improved her skills since her victory. A final swish and the axe is sent flying into a target, decapitating it. Another blink of the eye and a handful of axes designed for throwing have all found their way into her hands and then into either the foreheads or the chests of the other targets.
Her performance had the intended effect, and all of the viewers are either awed into silence or applauding. Yes, clap away, enjoy the return of the killing machine. She will show you all once she gets into that arena and she can begin to fight back from within.




What is your character scored: Aigis merits a score I’ll argue of 9 or 10. She has been trained her whole life for the arena, and she is very good at surviving, fighting, and going without food or water. She’s fast and agile and clever in ways that keep her alive in life or death situations. Her one great failing as a tribute is that she’s not very charming or personable, and that loses her points with some sponsors, otherwise I would vie for something higher. As a Panem AU she has no “powers” to speak of.



Additional information:


Past victor: Aigis’ arena was, at first blush, a ruined fairgrounds. It was halfway between a boardwalk and a six flags, but far more labyrinthian. Food was more easily scavenged from hidden stores of nonperishables in dangerous locations than it was from hunting, and the most obvious sources of water were old fountains that looked untrustworthy. Dangers, beyond fellow tributes, included unexpected movement from rides, pieces falling off of buildings or coasters, explosions, murderous animatronics, and more.

The cornucopia was situated right at the base of the ferris wheel, and was Aigis’ first goal when the countdown ended. She got a hold of a pair of axes and a bag of rations, killing four other tributes personally in the bloodbath. Her first stroke of luck came when she was confronted by one of the tributes from district two, near the wooden rollercoaster. They were locked in a staredown when one of the cars came loose and went hurtling into the other tribute, leaving Aigis with a clean getaway.

That incident inspired her to devise a new strategy- guerrilla tactics and well timed traps. She studied the patterns of “accidents” and hazards, and learned how to trick the bolder tributes into walking right into them in pursuit of her. She was directly responsible for the deaths of six more tributes, either through traps or direct killing over the next few days. She gained the nickname “Killing Machine” partially through her own performance and partially through the work of her stylist and mentor. They had purposefully worked with her stoic demeanor and her origin from the electronics district to dress her up like an android. Her aggressive tactics sealed the deal of her being thought of as the robotic killer from district three.

Her own district-mate was not among her kill count. He died of exposure after having been caught in the rain with no safe place for shelter and never shook the fever. She didn’t see him once after the cornucopia. During the arena, Aigis takes a rusted beam to the shins and sustains an infection that haunts her for the rest of the arena and required surgical replacement of the bone with a metal rod.

Eventually, it comes down to Aigis and a tribute from district one. They circle each other for hours, always not quite sure where the other is in their tracking, and plotting means of approach. The gamemakers try to force them together to end the arena and keep the masses entertained and Aigis uses the disintegrating arena to her advantage. Aigis is better at stealth and her rival is stronger and in better health than she is. She bought herself time with the stunts the gamemakers were pulling to try to push the tributes together, practiced now in avoiding shrapnel. Said shrapnel is used to build herself a ranged weapon because she knew with her legs how they were she would not survive a direct fight. The result was a cross between a child’s rubber band launcher and a proper gun. It takes her three shots, and she almost doesn’t manage it, but her third shot gets him straight between the eyes and wins her the arena.




Past victor AU: District 3. Aigis never really had the chance to become attached to her home. As soon as she could walk she was sent away to the most rigorous training academy to be molded into the tribute her District needed and deserved. There’s a certain level of Stockholm Syndrome attachment to her training facility, and very old memories of a much older sister who died in the arena years before Aigis was old enough to be reaped, but that’s about it. The knowledge that it was destroyed still weighs on her heavily, but it’s hard for her to articulate why, and if asked to describe her home all she could come up with is descriptions of her academy, or of the designs her stylist gave her when she was a tribute.



Hunger Games AU and OC: I can think of a couple of different reasons the Capitol might have to bring in Aigis from her original canon, or another AU, depending on how this Aigis’ development goes in-game, and at what point. With the relationship she will have with the Capitol as I first app her in, I see it likely that they would bring another Aigis as tribute in the hopes that they will get a good show like they did with Panem Aigis. Panem Aigis would have no strong response either way to having a doppelganger, they would assume, and be mostly correct, since basically nothing gets a strong response out of her.
If she goes the way of Rebellion that I’m hoping she will, I can see the Capitol bringing in a doppelganger to mess with her, force her to watch herself struggle and die again, in a different form, because life and death are important themes for her. It would be a punishment for her to have to watch herself be forced to kill or be killed, and unsure of which is worse, and have to struggle to choose who to protect: her double, or the people in danger of death by her double’s hand.