According to movies, like the ones Maya watched so long ago, while huddled up in a blanket with her sister, there were several principal ways for a person to meet the love of their life.

One such way was the proven method of crashing directly into them while in a hurry to reach one thing or another, which could only result in both involved people falling to the ground, briefly catching a lingering look at one another's faces, only just long enough to share a clearly significant moment, before being sharply dragged back to reality.

Another was - though no one would catch her admitting it - Maya's personal favourite, involving an event within the story that would, for even the shallowest of reasons, suddenly force the love interest into the other's company, preferably for the remainder of the film. There was a part of her brain that sometimes objected to the way this method seemed to consistently involve the two rapidly falling in love regardless of whether the movie's events really supported it or not, but Maya was too great a fan of a good love story to let that bother her. Even if the movie was terrible, and the experience of watching it left her and her sister wishing they'd found some other use for their time, getting to watch two people fall for one another was usually the highlight.

Maya remembered many spirited conversations about such things shared with her sister, and even after Mia's murder, the tradition lived on, albeit with Maya at the side of her sister's lone student, Phoenix Wright.


"OK, take Rachel, from Lunar Samurai." Phoenix said one such evening, while he searched through the rack of movies tucked away in the office.

"Nick" Maya said with a slight tone of warning. The one-hour pilot for the failed Lunar Samurai TV series wasn't something Maya liked to bring up in conversation. She didn't care what anyone else had to say on the subject; Lunar Samurai was easily the best idea since the original Steel Samurai series, and that it hadn't made it off the ground following the airing of its pilot episode was an injustice Maya couldn't stand for. Hearing Nick casually mention the name as if he didn't consider it as important as she did was a dangerous thing.

"No, really," Nick went on, apparently knowing what Maya was thinking, "You remember her first scene? She's on the phone, just talking to her mom about the laundry, but right when she's about to start saying something about a job application, she gets cut off by that-… that big, y'know, armoured space knight person crashing through the wall. Clearly she was planning to have a whole new branch in their conversation, but then BAM, space bounty hunter fight. Then she just helps the Samurai out and gets dragged into the plot."

"And she's awesome." Maya interjected. "She and the Lunar Samurai are the best pairing since the originals."

"I'm not saying she isn't." Nick responded. "I just mean that, in that scene, she obviously meant to keep talking to her mom, but then she gets sucked right into the plot and just throws away everything else she was up to at that point. That just makes me wonder about stuff, like, is her mom freaking out? Last thing she heard, their call got dropped, and then she doesn't hear anything for a week until they run into each other just before the shootout at the beginning of the third act. What was her mom up to for that week? They must've had something going on, but Rachel just throws whatever it is away to go and help the Samurai with fighting… what's the guy's name again? They never said it in the pilot."

Maya's reply was instantaneous. "The director's commentary said he was called the Red Star Soldier. Nothing about his real name, though. He was so cool, though, wasn't he?"

"Very. Not my point." Nick picked up. "What I'm saying is-"

But it was too late already.

"Ugh, it just makes me so mad, talking about it!" Maya cut in. "How could they just cancel it there? It's a waste of so much potential!"

Phoenix, having paused in his search to take part in this line of conversation, gave up on his point. He'd been too careless. Maya was off talking about everything she loved about the pilot episode, and that could take a while. It would be better for him to just return to his search and let her go ahead.


Maya took some time to realize just why she remembered that particular conversation so well. When at last she gave it some proper thought, during a train ride into the city, Pearl fast asleep with her head resting on her cousin's lap, she worked the reason out.

Nick had been trying to make a point about how the pilot took a moment to show hints of what its primary love interest character was up to in her own daily life, only to throw her headlong into the plot and keep her there for good. Whatever Rachel might have initially had in mind for her immediate future was discarded in favour of her becoming the Lunar Samurai's most trusted companion both on and off of the battlefield.

Maya supposed that if she were any other person, she wouldn't think much of it, but considering that she was Maya Fey, spirit medium in training-turned assistant to a defence lawyer, she could relate to the character.

Back then, on the horrible day that she lost her sister, everything she'd seen coming in her own immediate future was thrown out the window in much the same way. Her plans to settle herself down in a small apartment in the city, her hopes for managing her training with her new life in the city, and everything in-between had been forced into disappearing in favour of her trial.

And through everything that incident entailed, she found Nick. It was strange to consider how the time since had changed her. Her newly redoubled efforts to continue her training threatened to rob her of the opportunity to see her best friend, but with a bit of teamwork between her and little Pearl, they'd found a chance, which brought them to this moment on the train to the city.

Maya was fairly sure that Pearl was asleep. She gave a lighthearted roll of her eyes when she thought about how her cousin would respond if she knew just how greatly her thoughts were currently centred around Phoenix Wright.


Ten days of shippy nonsense, you say? Oh, I'm there.