she spreads her wings and takes to the skies.

[yatagarasu]

Open Post: The Kay Faraday Edition
This is my permanent Kay Faraday open post. Spam me with prompts, picture prompts, AUs, and the like. Indicate canon point or universe when necessary. Please note that I don't do slash, smut, anything sexual or anything overly and excessively violent.
Canon	Future AU
Choose a canon point, any canon point! Even from AAI2, why not.	7-8 years later, AJ/DD era. Prosecutor who studied under Miles Edgeworth. Still hyper and makes thief jokes. Still the Yatagarasu.
Somarium	Mask or Menace
Lived with Edgeworth and Stitch. Recruited Ema, Trucy and Maya into the Yatagarasu. 19 years old. Had college plans.	Can command and talk to crows, replicate voices and sounds perfectly, and use Charter Magic. Juror for Teen Court.

Badger get!

code by cawaii

Comments

[truthsnomiracle]

For the moment, coming to a greater understanding of our kind will do. Concerning song, or simply the... energy I feel compelled to infuse it with, I still have questions that may be within your ability to answer. Is there any use for singing or the power behind it aside from controlling humans?

[yatagarasu]

Absolutely! You can call for animals to help you out, and sometimes, it's used in healing or creating magic stuff. But those last two...uh, you need to learn those from the experts.

And it's not always for controlling humans, sometimes it's also for...calming them down or, as you've seen, undoing the control.

[truthsnomiracle]

Does this power relate to our ability to communicate with those same animals as well? For that matter, I'm left to wonder if it's at all applicable to overcoming language barriers with other sapient beings.

[yatagarasu]

Yeah. [She nods.] And if you try to sing in a different language...the power helps you get the meaning across but it'll be vague. Like a really crude online translator engine.

[Tech-savvy mermaid, this one.]

[truthsnomiracle]

Hmph. Hopefully with far less absurd distortions than that. Nevertheless, this certainly suggests a path to follow to attain a potentially useful skill.

[...Edgeworth, you do remember you're not a merman most of the time, right?]

[yatagarasu]

D'you really think you'd have enough time to work on that? I think half our time's already gone!

[truthsnomiracle]

[That is about right, actually.]

Er, right... (It's surreal to remember that this is a temporary change to a false form and not an assertion of my true one.) Few other worthwhile physical tests are coming immediately to mind, however, and the one that does strikes me as best done only a few minutes prior to returning to human form.

[yatagarasu]

What is it? You can do it now, and then just remove the choker before...whatever it is.

[truthsnomiracle]

Becoming human is not strictly necessary to the experience, though I suspect it might prove to be a temptation I would have to fend off. I simply wish to experience what it's like to deal with being beached and the level of mobility one has in such a situation.

Your suggestion begs a question, however: if the choker were removed prematurely, what would happen to the rest of the remaining time? And I ask again, how long must one wait between uses?

[yatagarasu]

You can use up the remaining time later on if you're gonna transform again. But once all that time is gone, you can't use the choker for 24 hours because a lot of power goes into transformation.

...and getting beached? Is so not fun. If you're close to the water, it's fine, but when you wind up pretty far or too tired...

[truthsnomiracle]

If the act of transformation itself uses so much energy, then I would expect removing the collar and putting it back on to reduce the total amount of time one could spend in a form not their own. Would it not take more energy at a time to actively change a creature so significantly in the first place than to keep it changed, much as it takes more energy to push something upward than to simply hold it in place?

[yatagarasu]

Hmm...now that you mention it, removing and wearing it doesn't count. The energy for actually changing and the energy for staying a merperson are different.

[truthsnomiracle]

Ah, I see. In that case, I see no reason to delay.

[With that, Edgeworth breaks into a swim towards the shallows, apparently undeterred by Kay's warnings of how unpleasant being beached can be.]

[yatagarasu]

H-Hey, wait up!

[Kay calls out to him and quickly follows him.]

Don't say I didn't warn you!

[truthsnomiracle]

I had no expectations of it being a pleasant experience to begin with, Kay. After all, simply being atop the rock as I am caused me to irrationally consider entering the water to be a solution to unrelated problems, and marine mammals' lives are endangered by being beached for more than a few minutes to a few hours despite the fact that they breathe air.

[By the time he finishes saying all this, he's reached the shallows and has to be careful just how he swims. He pauses to exhale, then stick his head above water and continue forward relying on air for his oxygen instead.]

[yatagarasu]

I know what you're thinking. This could come in handy when you're figuring out whether someone could have been able to commit a crime or not, right?

[On the other hand, Kay has the advantage of becoming human again when they reach the shallows. She then continues to swim using the backstroke.]

[truthsnomiracle]

Precisely. The opportunity to learn that sort of thing firsthand is why I chose to don the choker to begin with, after all.

[As the water grows too shallow to swim in at all, Edgeworth begins using his arms to pull himself onto the beach, pushing aside the nagging instinct not to do this.]

Nngh. (My tail is an obstacle like this... someone with poor upper body strength would have a hard time deliberately beaching themselves.)

[yatagarasu]

[And Kay just seats herself, stretching out her legs in the water and kicking them gently while watching Edgeworth with mild concern.]

But the question is, how would you prove that in court?

[truthsnomiracle]

Heh. Don't underestimate the value of such experiences — I've learned one thing already.

[Edgeworth pauses to catch his breath, then drags himself further onto the beach, trying his best to flop his tail such that the amount of friction it creates is minimized.]

(Though I cannot say it's a simple matter to continue to value the truth over my place in the water...)

[yatagarasu]

[Kay turns and shifts her sitting position so she can watch him without leaving the water.]

Pretty sure the court isn't gonna accept you transforming into a merman as evidence...

[truthsnomiracle]

Certainly not, but it would be entirely possible to make the point that dragging oneself in this way with insufficient upper body strength would be impossible. [Edgeworth pauses to catch his breath again.] As for how this method would be established in the first place, certainly I expect the trail I've left in the sand thus far to be quite distinctive. While the surf could wash such a trail away, a photograph taken at the proper time could capture it before then, could it not?

(Speaking for long when breathing takes this much effort is itself exhausting... I feel almost as though I were on some alien planet with higher gravity.)

[yatagarasu]

[She looks at the trail he left in the sand before focusing on Edgeworth again. Hopefully he's still okay...but then again, he could always remove the choker when the discomfort became unbearable.]

Yeah, that's right! Plus, whales and dolphins wouldn't drag themselves like this all over the sand...unless they weren't in their right minds!

[truthsnomiracle]

Nor do they have the proper limbs to even try in the first place. [Another pause to catch his breath, then:] At the very least, I can't imagine a dolphin being able to drag itself along the ground effectively with its fins alone.

[Edgeworth next struggles to take a deep breath, then presses his left arm against his side before pushing off the ground with his right to heave himself into a roll. Given his tapered shape, the roll is curved, but the possibility of someone doing that is proven — and the accompanying trail made.]

[yatagarasu]

[Kay stands up from the water and approaches him in case he needed some form of help.]

...Are you okay?

[truthsnomiracle]

(I hate to admit this, but under the circumstances...)

Nngh... gkk... a-admittedly... I won't be... for much longer. But you do have a record... of the trail I just left... do you not?

(I have to return to the water... no, wait. That isn't actually natural for me, despite how it feels right now. I could simply remove the choker...)

[Kay has a bit of time to act as Edgeworth deliberates.]