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]

[The technical papers on the desk don't seem to form any special pattern, but laying out the schematics makes it easier to piece together the big picture, at least in a metaphorical sense. There are some repeated numbers between pictures of the walkie-talkie-like device and the headphones — specifically between the antenna of the former and the larger, longer antennae on the sides of the latter. There's also some vague discussion of adjustment of sound frequencies in the earphones' output in reaction to input received from the small antennae, of the walkie-talkie performing analysis and processing of sound input prior to broadcast, and of automatic sound mixing occurring in the headphones immediately prior to output.

Meanwhile, Edgeworth uses the respite in Kay's goofing around to finally look through the papers on the first desk in some detail.]

(Curious... there's a great deal of information here about neurology, advanced sound mixing, and, of all things, hypnosis.)

[yatagarasu]

[Kay tries to start from one end of the line, and as she goes, she begins to notice the pattern. It has a lot of big words, but if she can condense the info into more understandable chunks...

The headphones and the walkie-talkie are connected somehow. The walkie-talkie probably controlled what the person will hear on the headphones, but at the same time, something would happen in the headphones before the person could hear whatever came from the walkie-talkie.

Wait.

Kay grabs the walkie-talkie and realizes that it only has a speaker, but nowhere to place one's ear on. She turns it over in her hands and lifts it to her mouth as if about to speak into it, but thankfully she remains quiet.

That is, until - ]

Eureka!

[truthsnomiracle]

[Edgeworth is startled by Kay's outburst, but turns to face her at a normal speed and crosses his arms.]

And for what reason did you choose to steal that particular line, Kay?

[yatagarasu]

[Kay grins triumphantly and makes a sweeping gesture toward the papers on the third desk.]

I think I figured something out! The headphones and the walkie-talkie are connected! I mean...they do something together!

[truthsnomiracle]

Ah, do they? Excellent work, Kay. Given that the headphones don't appear to have a microphone attached, I presume this involves a one-way broadcast from the walkie-talkie to the headphones?

[yatagarasu]

Ding ding, we have a winner!

[She grabs some of the sheets of paper and shows them to Edgeworth, pointing to the numbers between the diagrams of the walkie-talkie and headphones.]

Whatever goes through the walkie-talkie will be heard by whoever's wearing the headphones, but...somehow, it changes. The sound frequencies change.

[truthsnomiracle]

[Edgeworth takes a look at the papers himself, but a lot of this is Greek to him. The broadcasting and receiving of a particular frequency that Kay points out he can make some sense of with her direction, however.]

Huh. Do you have any idea how it changes or why?

[yatagarasu]

[She shakes her head, no longer as proud as she was before because her discovery just raised more questions.]

I dunno. Maybe it's a long-distance thing? But then you wouldn't need to mess up the frequencies...

[truthsnomiracle]

Meanwhile, a preliminary look at the materials on the desk with the computer suggests one possibility concerning what the more unusual antennae on the headphones might be for. Given that much of what's there concerns neurology, it's possible that they're meant to pick up on the wearer's brainwaves. After all, the way they're positioned, they'd be close to the wearer's head.

[And the notes on the schematics do suggest that input from the small antennae is used in the headphones' sound alteration algorithms...]

[yatagarasu]

The wearer's brainwaves? Why would they need that? [Kay leafs through the rest of the papers related to the walkie-talkie and the headphones.]

Does Mr. Erickson...want to read minds??

[truthsnomiracle]

[Aside from what Kay has already noticed, other details about the headphones crop up upon closer examination of the headphones. There's a small amount of RAM and a small solid-state drive like the innards of a USB thumb drive, but no actual mechanisms for writing to the latter, just reading from it. Furthermore, there look to be tiny microphones hidden within within the speakers of the headphones, but they only operate for three seconds when the headphones are first activated and the data used by the headphones in some way. Finally, it looks as though the headphones do transmit a very small amount of information back to the walkie-talkie, which uses that information to operate an LED that can be red, yellow, green, or off at any given time.]

Given that there is also literature pertaining to hypnosis here, I rather imagine that his dream is to control them. How far he might have come in achieving that dream, however, I cannot say.

[yatagarasu]

Hypnosis?

[Kay repeats the word incredulously.]

Whoa, that's so cool! I mean...if it's not used to commit a crime or anything. [She looks at the papers again.] I could think of a lot of people who'd want this kind of technology!

[truthsnomiracle]

And I can think of no end of the ways in which such technology could be abused. I've even seen laws against the use of hypnosis in court proceedings, as well as laws stating that exposure of its use against a witness being grounds for denying their credibility, due to the supposed ease by which a hypnotist can deliberately or even inadvertently confuse a person's memories or even conjure false ones.

As for the question of whether this technology was in fact used to commit the crime we're investigating, I find that hard to believe... and yet, we have a suspect who claims to have thoughtlessly used a poison they were neither aware of the nature of nor that they possessed. Out of context, it seems too absurd even for a lie, and yet he clearly has neither a direct nor an indirect motive, as well as no access to the poison.

[yatagarasu]

No access? Is it a top-secret poison? Or something you can only get from a secret lab?

[truthsnomiracle]

(Once again, Kay proves to be rather obsessed with secrets. I suppose I can't blame her for her ignorance given her absence when I confirmed this point with forensics, however.)

It does generally come from laboratories, though it is the specific formula rather than the laboratories which are secret. According to forensics, even most of its components are not generally available to the public, even if the procedure were well-known.

[yatagarasu]

Ohhh...that is fishy.

By the way, I found tiny microphones hidden in the headphones, if we're to believe the diagrams. [Kay waves the plans about.] And for some reason, even the headphones themselves transmit data back to the walkie-talkie. It's a bit complicated, but I think I figured that much out.

[truthsnomiracle]

Microphones within the headphones themselves? What purpose could that possibly serve? It seems strange to record whatever the listener is being made to hear...

[Edgeworth takes a look at the plans in question and blinks.]

"Operable for initial three seconds?" Curiouser and curiouser... One would think that within that timeframe, the only thing to be recorded would be the rushing of the wearer's own blood — the illusory "seashore" one hears when one holds a shell to one's ear, or in this case wears headphones.

[yatagarasu]

What if...that time is used to hypnotize the person wearing the headphones? Then after that, whoever's on the walkie-talkie gives the orders?

[truthsnomiracle]

In only three seconds? Aside from that point, however, your hypothesis sounds all too likely to be the intended function of this two-piece set given the evidence. If it does function in such a way, that in turn would raise possible lines of argument concerning the case, particularly given Mr. Condon's assertions concerning his actions. Like it or not, if we're to learn the whole truth of this case, this system must be tested on someone — someone not officially associated with this case, given the nature of the law and the specific possibility being tested.

[yatagarasu]

I dunno, can you hypnotize someone and order them around at the same time?

[Kay pushes some paperwork aside and confirms that the headphones and the walkie-talkie seem to be fully assembled and...charging? She picks up the headphones.]

Looks like we don't need to assemble them, at least.

[truthsnomiracle]

Then the only question is who to subject to this mad inventor's work. If it does anything like what it appears it was intended to, this could involve nothing less than a violation of the sanctity of the test subject's mind. Whoever was allowed to operate the walkie-talkie would need to be someone the test subject has deep and well-founded trust in.

(There are precious few I can even conceive of asking such a favor of...)

[yatagarasu]

[Gumshoe isn't here to do Edgeworth's dirty work, and it would be way too much trouble to lug this stuff out and ask for volunteers. Kay folds her arms across her chest, stares at the equipment and ponders what Edgeworth just said.

He was looking for a guinea pig, basically. In all honesty, Kay was a bit scared of what would happen, but maybe as long as they knew how it worked and how to turn it off...

She raises a hand.]

I'll do it. Well, once we know one hundred percent how to do it and that it won't, say, fry my brain or anything. [A sheepish laugh. It was clearly meant to psych herself up and take her mind off the less pleasant repercussions.]

[truthsnomiracle]

[Edgeworth's eyes and mouth alike immediately widen in shock, disbelief, and fear for Kay's safety. The prosecutor may have been weighing a few candidates in his mind, but Kay was not one of them.]

Y-you?! Kay, I...

[And for once, Miles Edgeworth is at a loss for words, or at least words that he's sure are the right ones to use. "I can't ask that of you" is one thing that comes to mind, but pushing away someone offering to make a sacrifice for the truth seems fundamentally wrong. "You would trust me so far as that?" is another thought that crosses his mind, but it seems like such a foolishly sentimental display of weakness and vulnerability he simply should not have.]

[yatagarasu]

[Kay gapes at him. Why does he look so stunned? She shrugs.]

If we wanna be sure this is a hypnotizing machine, how else are we gonna prove that without any scientists to help us read the rest of his paperwork?

Besides, we can't carry all this out and ask around for a guinea pig, can we?

[truthsnomiracle]

...It goes beyond that, Kay. Mere analysis of the schematics by experts wouldn't be enough. Even if we did verify what this is and whether it looks as though it would work on paper, it would then be necessary to prove that it does in fact work as intended. It would then become necessary to determine the extent of what it can cause a person to do. To act as the guinea pig for such an endeavor is... a great deal to ask of anyone.

Furthermore, there is the question of what someone could do with that knowledge once uncovered; the greater the possibilities, the greater the responsibility of the one given the leash.