milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

There's a man wandering into Milliways today, with a shabby blue suit and spiky black hair.

He stops, and glances around.

"Maya?" he calls out. "If this is some kind of elaborate prank, I'm very impressed, but could you please put the office back the way it was now?"

After waiting for a response, a rat comes over with a pamphlet. The man reads it.

He sighs, and shrugs.

And somehow, this is not the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me.

He sits down at the bar and orders a cup of coffee. When in Rome, right?

(ooc: Phoenix's internal monologue is in italics.)

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By Qinglongmon, that is one of the spikiest people Yamato has ever seen. Too spiky. Not spiky enough.

"You look new," he says, by way of greeting. "-- I mean, I've not seen you around before, at least."

Edited 2019-06-24 03:06 (UTC)

Phoenix turns to the kid that spoke. "Yeah, I, uh... I guess I am."

He rubs the back of his head.

"So...bar at the end of the universe, huh?"

"Yeah, it's ... it's weird," Yamato says, wrinkling his nose. "But since the end of the universe seems to never get any further than the window, it's really just, er. Decorative."

"So, it's like a pocket dimension?"

That sounds like something Maya would read about...

"How long have you been coming here?"

"Something like that. I don't know if anybody's a hundred percent sure on what this place is."

Although he's sure plenty of people have theories.

"Since I was eight, apparently. I don't really remember it, but people have told me that they've talked to an eight-year-old version of me, so."

"Eight? Wow."

Then Phoenix remembers his manners.

"Oh, I'm Phoenix, by the way. Phoenix Wright."

Yamato has never been good at remembering to introduce himself.

"Yamato Ishida," he says. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

He looks around the room. Lots of different people, not all of them human-looking.

"So where are you from? I'm from LA."

"Odaiba, out in Tokyo Bay," Yamato says. "At least most of the time: Right now, my door leads out to a different town in a different world, it's, er, been a few months since I've been back to Odaiba."

"Huh. I guess you have more experience than most traveling to other worlds, then?"

"I -- guess so, actually," Yamato says, because he's never thought of it like that. He tends to think of all the worlds in his multiverse as just counting as one world, at least in Milliways terms. "My world is actually more like a collection of, er ..."

He counts off on his fingers.

"At least five, possibly as many as eight worlds," he says. "In the other dimensions sense rather than a space travel-y kind of sense, although there are people here from places with space travel and intergalactic civilisations and stuff."

"Space travel?"

I am definitely telling Maya about this.

"Is that something you have in your world?"

"Not in my world, no," Yamato says, shaking his head quickly. "Or I guess we do, but it's not like anyone's been further than the Moon, and that was a long time ago."

"Well. I guess my world's pretty normal compared to that."

"Maybe, but I've not really met anyone here whose world is completely normal. Everyone here seems to have something weird about their worlds."

Phoenix shrugs.

"Well, I do have a friend who can channel the dead."

There's a momentary, tiny twitch of an eyebrow at that.

"... They can, huh? That must be ... good ... for them."

Beat.

"That's not -- not a thing in my world, ghosts don't exist."

Phoenix nods. "Yeah, it's come in handy a few times for both of us."

I don't actually know if ghosts exist in my world, either.

"Come in handy? For ..." Yamato thinks for a moment, just mentally going over all the ways talking to dead people could be useful. "... Solving murders?"

Phoenix nods. "Sort of. She's occasionally channeled my late mentor, when I was really stuck during a trial or two."

And there was the one time she helped us find Maya when she was kidnapped. And the time she used her powers to seduce a witness...

"Is that ... is that even allowed in court? I feel like that might not be allowed in court."

Dead people should stay dead, not come back and practise law.

Phoenix gives an awkward shrug. "Well, there aren't really any rules about it, period."

He waves his hands. "I don't mean she does my job for me. Mia was always about letting me figure things out on my own, even when she was alive. But a lot of bad people have been found guilty because of her help, including her murderer."

Yamato makes an irritable noise in the back of his throat, but it's less to do with the potential legal repercussions of Ghost Legal Counsel and more because he just doesn't do well with ghosts at all.

"... I guess the murder victim helping out with their own murder trial would be useful," he allows, grudgingly.

I better not tell him about the whole debacle with Dahlia. Phoenix still shudders when he thinks about it.

"It was. That case was how I met her sister, Maya. She's my assistant now."

"Nothing like a death to bring people together, I suppose," Yamato says mildly. "How long has she been working for you?"

"About two years now." Phoenix smiles. "She's a handful sometimes, but she's pretty much my best friend." When she's not siphoning my paycheck to buy fast food, that is.

"Does she plan on become a lawyer herself? Not that there's anything wrong with being an assistant, it's just -- good experience for if she did."

"Oh, no. She's a spirit medium first and foremost. I'm pretty sure she's going to take over as the head of her family eventually."

"If that's what she wants to do, then sounds like that's worked out pretty well. I have a friend like that -- er, not a spirit medium, but the future head of a family, her mother is the current grand master of an iemoto house."

"Yeah, she seems to be...

...Sorry, a whathouse?"

(ooc: This version of Nick can't speak Japanese. :P)

[ooc: :P I figured as much.]

"Iemoto. Er," Yamato pauses for a moment to figure out how to explain this. "They're the house that created a particular art form, and are the only ones legally allowed to teach it. In Sora's case, her family created a particular style of flower arrangement that used to be taught to young noblewomen."

Well, I guess that's kind of like Maya's situation.

"And she's okay with that?"

"Nowadays, sure. When she was younger, she was less keen on it."

Although whether it was the family business itself or the feeling that she was only valued as an heir is up for debate.

Phoenix nods. "I can understand that. Mia was supposed to inherit the title, but she left the village to study law instead."

(ooc: Sorry for slow reply; moving issues.)

[ooc: No worries.]

"But she's still planning on going back someday? I mean, I guess nobody can blame her for wanting to at least get out and see the world first."

"Well, Mia's gone now. But she helped so many people in her life."

And her mother was always thinking about her and Maya, even until the end.

"And I do think Maya will take over, when she's ready."

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