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

[yatagarasu]

Well, if you pair a merperson playing an instrument with another one who's singing, they could nearly be unstoppable. And just because we have this kind of power doesn't mean we never get tired of singing...our throats get sore, too, and sometimes we even lose our voices.

[Kay idly strokes the detail in the mermaid statuette's hair with a finger.]

And since the power comes from within us, we can't use instruments like...um, drums or violins or cymbals.

[truthsnomiracle]

["Nearly unstoppable" is not something Edgeworth ever wanted hear concerning anyone's ability to override another's free will, and it shows despite his continued firmness.]

No percussion or string instruments, in other words — only those which depend on one's breath.

[yatagarasu]

Exactly.

[Kay notes the unease Edgeworth shows.]

Don't worry, I said "nearly", didn't I? And like I said on the ship, you can build up some immunity over time.

[truthsnomiracle]

Which is only of potential help to one who dedicates themselves fully to such relations. Is there really no other defense — nothing that could be given to a witness, for example?

[yatagarasu]

Hmmm... [She leans back while remaining seated, using her arms as support.] I'm trying to figure out if I missed something...

I wasn't kidding about people being tied to masts and having their ears plugged up, though.

[Kay rises up again and walks into her cave of treasures, but still doesn't leave Edgeworth's line of sight.]

[truthsnomiracle]

(Given that I've already asked her this question in the past, I suppose she must not know how one might investigate alternative solutions to the problem. For that matter, I suppose it's all too likely that merpeople have never considered it a problem to be solved at all...)

[Rather than sharing any of these pessimistic thoughts, however, Edgeworth simply watches Kay silently and waits.]

[yatagarasu]

[She finds a small wooden chest with a letter written on what looks like paper made of seaweed attached to the lock. When Kay opens it with one of the keys from her hairpin, it reveals nothing except a metal headband with an intricate wave design embossed on it.]

Oh! My relatives were working on something that can allow humans to listen to siren songs without getting hypnotized...but that's the thing. It's still a work in progress.

Plus, we don't know yet if two magic artifacts can be worn at the same time.

[truthsnomiracle]

Has science only made the strides necessary to allow such an effort recently, then? As for the matter of wearing multiple artifacts, one would think that would be a simple thing to test. Is there reason to suspect it would be dangerous to try?

[yatagarasu]

[Kay nods, replacing the headband in the chest.]

Not really, it's more like...some kinds of magic might be incompatible with others. That will cause one artifact to work and the other to malfunction, or something like that.

[truthsnomiracle]

In short, while merpeople have learned enough to create things on an individual basis, even experts among your kind have insufficient understanding of the underlying processes to make any sort of predictions concerning how those individual results might affect one another?

[yatagarasu]

They say magics of rival clans, or a clan that opposes another's beliefs, are the worst. It's not easy to manipulate them.

...Still, it's worth a try. It might be different with a human. [Kay reaches into the pocket of her shorts and pulls out the ring, attached to a belt loop by a very fine chain.]

[truthsnomiracle]

I don't believe you've spoken at length about these clans. Would you care to elaborate?

[yatagarasu]

[She slips the ring back into her pocket, inhales deeply and answers his question.]

There are different families of merpeople. Some really hate people...a lot, and want nothing to do with them or even the rest of us with human blood. Others are neutral and don't care either way. Still others, like mine, are very open to merpeople and humans being friends...and sometimes, more than that.

[Kay was proof of that.]

Those who are anti-human usually live far away from our cities. Depending on how deep their hatred is, it seeps into their magic. Basically, our will, our emotions, and our thoughts can influence how we make stuff, or even sing.

[truthsnomiracle]

That's... a rather strange notion to contemplate. Humanity has never had credible reports of such aspects of the mind affecting anything beyond one's own body at the most, unless one counts mere mundane self-expression as "external". Certainly the laws of physics don't include mood-dependent provisions. [And for that matter, he sounds disdainful of the very idea.] I'm left to wonder how it is that such matters could possibly differ to such an extreme.

[yatagarasu]

You could think of our world as an upside-down version of yours.

[She manages an amused smile at that before turning her attention back to everything else in the cave as if wondering what else was worth showing.]

[truthsnomiracle]

[That joke does not go over so well.]

I would rather think that logic will actually work when applied to undersea society.

[yatagarasu]

[When she looks at Edgeworth again, she is holding a pair of brass hoops large enough for a wrist - or perhaps an ankle - to slip through.]

The fact that I even exist and we can ensnare you just by singing is kind of beyond logic, though.

[truthsnomiracle]

...Kay. Listen carefully. Things that cannot be explained are simply disregarded in court. If your kind and so much of your society are really "inexplicable", that leaves little hope for my ability to be of any use in bridging the gap between our worlds, let alone investigating or prosecuting crimes related to the interaction between them where the criminal doesn't simply give herself away like last time! Ergo, I cannot simply accept that anything is "beyond logic". Do you understand?

[To judge by Edgeworth's tone, Kay has strayed well into "dude not funny" territory by now.]

[yatagarasu]

[Kay slowly replaces the brass rings where they had previously been, quiet at first, and then - ]

Okay, okay...um, you can turn down the glare now. If it makes you happy, I know merpeople who probably know magic more than I do. You can talk to them.

[truthsnomiracle]

[That does seem to help, given that Edgeworth does in fact turn down the glare. Only a portion of his tension drains away, however, and he crosses his arms with his tea in hand, tapping his finger on the cup instead of his arm.]

That would seem to be an obvious necessity. A basic understanding of the biology and anatomy of merpeople would undoubtedly be of use as well.

In any case, two questions come immediately to mind about your presentation thus far. First, is there any particular reason why you are simply showing me various objects without actually describing them? I can suppose from context that the brass loops you just showed me were the anklets you mentioned earlier, and I did notice that the statuettes you showed me appear to also function as containers. However, the relevance of the latter in particular eludes me, and I'm unsure what the headband is given that what you were describing at the time was an unfinished product whose existence you had to think for quite some time to even recall. Second, you've shown me metal items apparently created by merpeople; how is it that they practice metallurgy in the first place?

[yatagarasu]

[Kay sighs, and holds up a finger.]

One, because you keep asking questions, and I have to answer them first before I tell you what these things do.

[Then she puts up another finger.]

Second, it shouldn't be that surprising. We have underwater volcanoes, and just because we're underwater doesn't mean we can't generate heat, or trap air that we can use.

You know that trick where you put a glass upside-down on a piece of cardboard and place it in a bowl of water? That's proof you can take air down underwater for forging weapons and stuff like that.

[truthsnomiracle]

[Edgeworth takes a sip of tea as Kay speaks and borderline smiles at the end of her answer.]

I see. I presume, then, that any sufficiently controllable source of underwater heat will serve as something to build a city around, much as human settlements most often center around exploitable resources?

[yatagarasu]

That's right. [She nods and walks back to the blanket, plopping down in front of Edgeworth.] Anyway, it's not like we can't be taught how to make fire. We'd just have to come up from the water to do that.

[truthsnomiracle]

Or bring air down, as you mentioned. For that matter, I suppose that light and algae alone could be used to regenerate a sufficient level of oxygen in a container of air for reuse.

[The prosecutor takes another long sip of his iced tea.]

[yatagarasu]

That's the spirit! We've got you thinking like a merman! And actually, that's what some of these things do!

[She gestures to the statuettes on the blanket.]