Day 50: Arts & Crafts Room (4th Shift)
It barely felt like she'd been outside for any time at all when the intercom sounded and the nurse came to fetch her. "Can't I stay a little longer?" she asked, but the woman only clicked her tongue and frowned, reaching to feel her forehead as though testing for a fever. "The weather simply isn't good enough, Natalie dear," the nurse said, once
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Maybe the art room would be less frustrating. Carter wandered over with his hands in his pockets and reviewed the supplies, finding the technology familiar but disappointingly lacking in any 'futurey' traits. Oh, well. It was still more exploring, and there were a lot more colors of crayon than he'd had back home. When he saw a pretty girl bent over a drawing he nearly mistook her for Kairi. It had been so dark last night...no, but that wasn't the way her hair was cut, or the right shade. Still, she was people!
"Whatcha got there?" Carter asked in a friendly fashion, peering over her shoulder. "Oh! It's a dog, isn't it? I had a dog once, at my old prison. Is that your dog?" Anyone who like dogs couldn't be a bad sort.
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"Indeed, it is a dog. But he is not mine," Aigis replied. She glanced back down at her drawing. "He is a friend. Koromaru-san. He worked alongside me back home."
She took a moment and thought back on his words. He had mentioned a prison. "You had a dog when... you were a jailer? Was he a guard dog?" That was the most logical explanation, but it seemed polite to ask rather than just assume.
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Koromarusan was a pretty long name for a dog. Almost a Japanese kind of name, but the girl had blue eyes and blonde hair so she couldn't be Japanese. He knew what she meant, though, some dogs just belonged to themselves and all you did was feed them and pet them and maybe let them inside when Mom wasn't looking.
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"Dogs are very loyal creatures. It would take someone with a great heart to turn them from their masters." She stated this in a matter-of-fact tone. She put down her crayon and focused all her attention on the man, hoping to read more into his character. He seemed friendly, but she had experience dealing with two-faced men. A gentle smile could not always be believed.
"My name is Aigis." She bowed her head respectfully. "I hope I am not imposing if I ask for your own."
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Aigis, Aigis. Carter pronounced the name firmly in his head, to make sure he didn't stumble on it later. So many nice girls here, this was much better than Germany. In Germany half the nice girls turned out to be Nazi agents and that just wasn't very fair of them.
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"I see..." she muttered after hearing his story. He was an officer and in a prison where "they" had a friend working on the inside. She didn't like the sound of that but she was hesitant to make snap judgments. He seemed so friendly, yet...
"I apologize, Carter-san, but I must be frank. I am curious as to why you were imprisoned. You do not seem to be the criminal sort." Her brows knit together in concern, but her voice remained as neutral as ever.
Although he could easily lie to her if he wished, she would give him this chance to be honest with her. Nothing he had said so far had been much to clue her in to his situation back home, but it wasn't Carter's fault. Her data only covered the history of the Iwatodai area in Japan. Matters from overseas had never been planted in her data banks. And the only history class she had taken during her short time at Gekkoukan High had been Japanese History, which she had failed rather miserably.
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In a surge of inspiration Carter commandeered her red crayon and a blanks sheet of paper. He drew a swastika on one side of the paper and an extremely crude eagle-shape on the other, then drew wavy lines around both of them to indicate that they were separate countries. "See, we're fighting a war against the Germans over here," he said, indicating the swastikaed block. He drew an arrow from the birdish block to the swastika block. "I was in a fighter plane that flew over Germany, but my plane got shot down and I got captured. And when you get captured on the wrong side of a war they put you in a prison called a stalag." Carter made a little square in the swastika block and labeled it 'Stalag 13'.
"So you see, I'm not a criminal guy," he finished with a broad grin. "I'm a good guy who got locked up by bad guys." Mostly. You still got shot as a spy if you got caught doing the sort of things Carter did half the nights of the week.
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"I was unaware there was a war currently in session," Aigis muttered, watching Carter work on his example. She didn't know what the bent cross was, but she could identify the other drawing as an interpretation of a bird. So Carter was from the bird country that fought the Germans, a word she recognized but only to the extent that they were people from Germany. She knew nothing about the country or its morals, but Carter claimed they were the enemy of whatever country he came from. Perhaps somewhere in the Americas or Europe.
Considering their positions here in the institute, Aigis decided he could be trusted. Carter was at the mercy of a merciless man, just as she was. And it was hard for her to not give him the benefit of the doubt. He seemed very friendly and kind, and his grin was quite infectious.
"Forgive me for my suspicions, Carter-sa--I mean, Carter." Aigis smiled back at him, a small, polite lift of her lips. "I appreciate your honesty."
She turned her eyes back to the paper, studying the strange, bent cross and the box prison camp. "I suppose this place isn't much different from your Stalag thirteen. That is, except for the monsters at night." At least she hoped he hadn't encountered them outside of the institute. Having to deal with Shadows on top of a war seemed much too heavy a burden for anyone to carry.
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Aigis' slight grin made Carter smile even brighter. "Oh no, it's much much nicer here," he said dreamily, acid-scarred fingers toying with another crayon. "It's warm, and you can have all the nice food you can eat, and the beds are soft and nobody calls you out for roll call before dawn or in the middle of the night and then yells at you if you don't line up fast enough. And the nurses are a lot nicer than the guards back at the stalag, even if they laugh at you sometimes. I think I've been in hotels worse than this prison...almost makes a guy not want to leave." He doodled a stick-figure dog next to the Stalag 13 box.
They'd used that excuse on Klink before, saying they loved the camp and the commander (yuch!) too much to try and escape. Old Klink had bought it, because Klink was a sucker for flattery delivered by roguish Americans, but if Carter ever said it to Dr. Landel he'd probably mean it.
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"Maybe it is because I have an important duty to fulfill, but I cannot tolerate staying here for much longer." She still had a world to save from spiraling into darkness. There wasn't much she could do alone, though. She would have to take Minato, Yukari and Junpei with her when she left. Her smile faded as a miserable thought passed through her mind--what of the other friends and acquaintances she had made here? Scar, von Karma, Utena, MOMO, what of their fate? And Heat, the thought of leaving him behind hurt worst of all.
To distract herself from her brooding thoughts, Aigis watched Carter doodle more lines on his paper. She hadn't paid much attention to his hands before, but seeing the scars put her on alert once more. "Carter-san! How did your hands become so scarred?"
She noticed a second too late that she had forgotten to drop the suffix, but that wasn't important now. She was more worried about what kind of creature had gotten to this young man and if he was still in pain.
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When Aigis cried out Carter jerked his fingers back and hid them against his chest. "Oh! I'm sorry about that," he said, panicked. "I usually wear gloves." Not for fashion, but because one of the smarter Germans might wonder how an imprisoned bombardier got so many little white marks on his fingers. "It's, um..." He fidgeted, unsure how much he wanted to tell the girl about his night job. She might not find it very attractive, if she didn't know much about how prison camps were either.
Finally the sergeant stretched his hands back out again, letting her get a full look at him. His hands were paler than the rest of him in general, not usually as exposed to the sun and wind, but they were even paler where corrosive chemicals had stained his skin. The burns were mostly on his fingertips, but there was a red one at his wrist where he'd actually had them go up in his face. Subpar supplies didn't help, but sometimes Carter was just sort of stupid.
"They're chemical burns," he admitted, a bit ashamed of his appearance. "See, when I was in the prison we were working with the underground, which is the good Germans who don't want the evil Germans we're fighting to be in control of the government. My job was making bombs to destroy bridges and factories and stuff, so they'd have a harder time fighting the war. And usually I'm pretty good at it, but..." He wiggled one set of fingers sheepishly. "Sometimes I made mistakes."
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"That is good to hear." She paused for a moment, considering her own words. "Good, because I would have been greatly saddened had they been inflicted upon you by the establishment."
Aigis tapped a crayon against her paper, leaving darker smudges of grey with each tap. Her face had lost all cheeriness and her gaze remained fixed on the table. "I have heard stories about the special 'treatments' given at night here. I do not tolerate cruelty."
Had she the power, Aigis would save all who were taken at night. She knew they would not let her through without a fight, and they had severely disabled her by taking her ammunition. She understood it would not be possible to accomplish anything with just her baseball bat. If she was to take this battle seriously, she would need something stronger, like...
She glanced back at Carter, curious. "Have you ever considered making any bombs while you are here, Sergeant Carter?"
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He doodled a little cartoonish bomb, a ball with a burning fuse, next to the swastika. He heard about the experiments too, but it all seemed like so much rumor to him. Everyone here seemed so nice, besides that weirdo Landel rambling over the intercom. A place this nice couldn't have that sharp of a dark side, nothing was that grey. You had good people and evil people, lines were that sharp.
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She raised an eyebrow at the childish image he drew of a bomb, but she didn't comment on his artwork. "Well, if you do find the proper materials necessary, I would appreciate the opportunity to put your work into good use." To an outsider, Aigis probably didn't look to be the type to use highly dangerous explosives, especially now that her body had been altered to look almost completely human. Aigis didn't put much stock into looks, so she hardly thought it strange to talk with just about anyone about weapons.
"Actually, Sergeant Carter, if you need help in gathering any materials, I would like to offer my assistance." She couldn't imagine the ingredients being all that easy to come by, especially if only one person happened to be looking. She was always willing to lend her aid. It made her feel useful, even if it was just an illusion.
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It wasn't a fair question, even taking into consideration his origins. He'd met plenty of female agents on both sides of the fence, all capable of skill and ruthlessness that made them the equal of any of Carter's gang. But to have a woman involved in the holy and manly world of high explosives just seemed wrong somehow. Carter had enough trouble when he had to present his creations to uninformed men, women were even more confusing.
Carter looked back at his doodle, then drew an X over it and drew something a little more period accurate. There were wires and lengths of TNT and a tiny clock on the top for a timer.
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"As for bombs," Aigis began, even as she drew a rather accurate picture of a modern machine gun on her own paper, "I am not incredibly familiar with their creation, but their operation is simple enough to grasp."
She continued to draw as she spoke, adding details and shading with clear, precise strokes. "My weapon of choice is the gun. I am proficient in the use of all types, from pistols to hand canons and all that falls in-between. Unfortunately, the probability of obtaining a gun of any caliber here is fairly low."
Aigis would be lying to herself if she thought the baseball bat in her room was an adequate weapon, but she had been programmed to be truthful in all situations. She could not lie to herself any easier than she could lie to a friend or a complete stranger.
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