Germany wasn't like this at all.
The lights of the Los Angeles skyline had a notable contrast with the nightfall surrounding them, which made them feel even brighter by comparison. The large glass window that stretched across the far wall of Franziska von Karma's bedroom supposedly gave her apartment a more "modern" look, yet it did nothing at all to stop the glaring lights of the tall buildings outside from shining directly into her eyes as she lay in bed. This nightly occurrence prevented any kind of rest unless she repositioned herself into awkward and uncomfortable pose, which in turn did little to remedy her inability to go to sleep.
It was partly true - Franziska's homeland of Germany had its fair share of big cities, but the area she was raised in was surrounded by lush green forests that echoed the songs of birds in the daytime and the chirping of crickets at nightfall. Although venturing into it, especially when it was dark outside, wasn't something she made a habit of doing, the soothing sounds of the woods outside of the von Karma manor whispering through her window at night was definitely amongst her fondest childhood memories.
She quickly turned to lay on her other side, clenching her eyes tightly together in an attempt to prevent the glaring city lights from piercing through her eyelids. The attempt was futile, unfortunately, and she found herself tossing and turning rapidly back and forth, knocking her blankets into a jumbled mess that lay on top of her. This frustration was becoming unbearable - curse these foolish fools who thought it would be a good idea to foolishly make the windows in the bedroom so large! Gah! This was supposed to be one of the most luxurious apartments the city of Los Angeles had to offer, and all it did was cut back on her beauty sleep. Terrible. Foolish, even. The insomnia brought on by the blazing lights of the tall buildings outside was far too frequent for this to be considered "luxury."
After tossing and turning some more, her head soon found itself buried under her pillow. She let out a muffled groan into the turquoise sheets clinging to the top of her mattress - this was one of the worst nights of being unable to sleep she had since she had moved in, and the pain she felt now was no doubt going to be felt tenfold by that fpolish detective that had been assigned to her. Perhaps she'd even call him up to her office just to make amends for this sleeplessness. He may have been an incompetent detective, but she quickly discovered that he was quite possibly the most excellent stress ball she had ever encountered.
She lifted up the side of her pillow to take a quick peek at the digital alarm clock adjacent to her bedside.
2:42 a.m.
…
2:42 a.m.
...
The digitized numbers blinked on and off with the time remaining the same, taunting her inability to sleep as if it were a matador waving his red curtain in front of a bull. Franziska could be considered a light sleeper back home in Bavaria, but these sleepless nights that she had to endure ever since her move to the United States were just infuriating. She sat up and scanned her bedroom, taking note of the fact that her vision had no need to re-adjust itself to her surroundings even though she'd been laying in bed for nearly 4 hours at this point. A headache began to creep its way towards her temples the more she thought about this ridiculous "modern" architecture. With headaches came anger, and with anger came…
CRACK!
"Foolish alarm clock, foolishly taunting me…" Franziska grumbled to herself, her mood having been soured.
She felt a touch of pride at the same time, however - she couldn't recall the last time she was able to reach for her whip and use it in such a singular swift and fluid motion. One moment, she was just sitting in bed, the next, BAM! The alarm clock was tasting the leathery fury of the prosecutorial prodigy known as Franziska von Karma! A sly smirk crept across her face with this thought, but that wasn't enough to wash away the crankiness caused by a sleepless night.
A desire for coffee swept over her - she found it to have a very soothing effect on her, and she knew she was unlikely to go to sleep tonight anyway.
A sleepless Franziska von Karma could scare away a rabid grizzly bear, to put it bluntly, and it was showing through the way she tromped through her living room and around the corner into her kitchen. The relatively numerous amount of times Franziska had gone to the prosecutor's office in the morning with a poor mood had resulted in minor lacerations for anyone who bore her any kind of frustration, which even on her best of days was a relatively easy task to perform. Of course, she was well aware of what her whip could do to one's skin, but did little to change as much. Why put forth the effort to help others whom she hardly cared about?
This was certainly a cold line of reasoning, but her career wasn't dependent on feelings. It was dependent on logic.
"Perhaps feelings do provide motivational support," she thought to herself as she pressed the button on her coffee pot that initiated the brewing sequence. "But nevertheless, it isn't entirely needed, unlike logic. Analytical minds make for perfect prosecutors."
Her inner monologue had seen a sharp rise in activity ever since she left her homeland, and that was likely due to the many sleepless nights she had been facing because of the size and placement of the window in her bedroom. Foolish modern architecture. Bah. The bumbling detective could probably come up with a better design schematic. The von Karma manor didn't make use of such foolish and inconvenient designs. It felt more like a modernized castle than anything, with the long, winding staircases and the wide, echoing hallways that were illuminated by regal chandeliers and decked from end to end with the various painted masterpieces her papa had spent a fortune collecting whenever he wasn't working.
Her papa was a tough mentor who applied much pressure, sure, but the fact of the matter was that some of her most cherished memories came from that time of her life. She was a vicious little one, of course - even as a little girl, she was ever the sadist. Smacking family servants and Miles with her riding crop for whatever reason she deemed necessary, sometimes purely for her own entertainment. She had so much fun at the manor when she wasn't working on things related to her future as a prosecutor or other intellectual pursuits of that nature.
Maybe the other children her age worked significantly less than she did, but perhaps that made the memories of all the fun times she had just that much sweeter, as fleeting as they may have been.
The sweet scent of the bitter drink began to dance around her nostrils, teasing her while simultaneously letting her know her drink was almost finished brewing. She found solace in coffee - for the longest time she preferred tea, but her tastes changed as she grew. The smoother the coffee the better - she didn't like it with milk or cream, though, as that just diluted an otherwise wonderful drink. Tampering with it made it into a different drink entirely, and one that wasn't as good on top of that. A machine that could brew the kind coffee that she had grown to love was hard to find, but she did manage to find a brewing machine that could produce a cup of the smooth yet bitter drink she cherished for a one time fee of a little over 1,600 Euro.
Because of the pricetag, her coffee brewer was one of the few items she carried with her when she moved.
Once the machine and squeezed the last bit of coffee into her cup, a bit of welcomed excitement rushed over her as she picked it up and proceeded to take it into the dining area of the apartment, which was a small breakfast table seated by another one of the thick glass panes that these foolish architects had deemed modern. After taking a glance around her apartment from where she sit, she noticed that the only source of illumination was coming from the tall buildings outside. At this sight she quickly turned down to her coffee in disgust. Why were the lights of those buildings even on at 3 in the morning? At the very least the fools inside could dim them as to not disturb anyone trying to sleep in the high rise apartment complex she lived in.
Time kept passing as she sat at her small breakfast table that was pressed up against the thick glass windows of her apartment. Seconds turned into minutes before she had found herself staring into the cup of black liquid, allowing the homesick memories of her childhood at the von Karma manor to seep into the forefront of her mind, a place usually reserved entirely for perfection and perfection alone.
A soft smile began to slowly spread across her lips - it was far from that cold, arrogant von Karma grin that seemed genetic. This was more of a blissful smile, reminiscent of simpler times in her life. She may have only been 18, but she certainly was an old 18, and those childhood days at the von Karma manor seemed so long behind her now.
She had loved to color when she was young - it always had to be *exactly* within the lines, or else it would be imperfect and not live up to that proud von Karma creed! No exceptions! She remembered she would color a picture in one of her books, and upon completing it in the expected quality, she would neatly and carefully tear it out of her coloring book and run down the hall to Miles' room, hoping to give it to him as a gift out of admiration and respect. Unfortunately for both him and her, the young mind of Franziska von Karma went all sorts of places upon arriving to her destination and he received little more in terms of a gift than being shouted at by an admittedly intimidating little girl and the occasional bruise from her riding crop. Not a single one of the pictures she had colored with him in mind ever actually made it to him, ironically.
"Hm." A short, yet pleasant hum escaped her mouth as she took a sip of her coffee that had since gone from piping hot to a mere warm. She always did admire his intellect - it was blatantly obvious to her, even though she was rather young and inexperienced. One of the first things she could tell upon meeting him was that he had a gift for processing things, and could calculate everything he needed to know within a few seconds. It was apparent by the way he moved that he was constantly contemplating his surroundings and that his mind never slowed down for anything. That led her to admire and respect him, and as quiet as he may have been, she was able to tell he had grown to be quite fond of her as well, at least when she wasn't causing him physical pain in some form or fashion.
She was 7 years his junior, but they had both attended the same school. The private academy her papa had sent them to placed everyone in one giant building, with each age group being divided into a separate hallway. It was a relatively exclusive school - Franziska's entire grade had 48 students total - but the exceedingly deep-pocketed costs that the school demanded were mostly invested in the fact that it offered one of the premiere educational experiences in all of Germany. That isn't taking the fancy luxuries the academy provided into account, however - whether it be the personal computers and tablets, or the fancy cushions in the seats of their desks or even the desks themselves, which were made from fine mahogany . Manfred von Karma was a man who was known for not accepting anything less than the very best of things, whether that be the education being given to those under his care or the performance of those that he was sending to be educated - there was absolutely nothing but perfection.
It was those expectations that often led to Franziska finding herself at the forefront of the classroom, blocking out the imbecilic whispering of her classmates around her. Their foolish playground games were beneath her - she was a von Karma,and von Karmas don't partake in mindless and childish pursuits. During the recesses allotted to the students throughout the day, she would always find herself in the library or in the classroom, using the computers to study law or some other intellectual pursuit of von Karma nature rather than foolishly running around the playground, playing tag or using the swing sets and whatnot. When the school day was over, she would return home and proceed to study law alongside Miles, directly under the tutelage of her father. If he wasn't there, he would phone in an educator to temporarily fill in his shoes while he was gone. It was as simple as that - there was no such thing as time off in the von Karma household.
The formerly warm smile that was spread across her lips quickly spread into a scowl at these thoughts - the cross she bore was in her namesake.
Being a von Karma, the path that she was to take was laid out before she was even born. There were no alternate routes for her to take or choices for her to make. She was a von Karma, and von Karmas are born into one fate - perfection. There is nothing else other than victory and success, and if she were to stray from that path of total perfection then she was nothing more than a blemish on the family name.
The words of the old metaphor of applying pressure to coal and getting a diamond in return popped into her thoughtlines. Yes, she had become a diamond due to pressure - she became a prosecutor at the age of thirteen, when most other girls were worrying about zits and boys and other trivial matters. She was defeating lawyers with 3 times her experience in court as a young adolescent, and she was doing so in very convincing fashion to boot. She was a prodigy, and her purported genius brought her great fame in her homeland - to be expected, as her father was considered to be the greatest prosecutor in the world over.
Oh, how she wanted to be great like her papa - but she knew she didn't have that kind of intelligence and she had no doubt in her mind that he had known she didn't. Perhaps this played a more minor role as to why he took a shining to Edgeworth. The lessons her papa had thought them both had come to him much more naturally, while she had to work herself endlessly to meet the expectations set by her name. Her childhood had been wasted in order to please her papa, and Edgeworth had to put forth half the effort to get the same results she got going full speed ahead.
With this thought, lightning crashed just outside of her window, temporarily breaking her train of thought. A downpour quickly followed, causing her to turn and gaze at the rain as it began to run down the side of her window. The pitter-patter the droplets made as they tapped against the glass was almost relaxing to her, but she had been too deep in thought to forget where her mind was taking her.
Perhaps she wanted to forget, though. Perhaps she liked remembering the few moments of bliss she had as a little girl at von Karma manor to forget the cold reality of her childhood - the cold reality being that she never really had a childhood to begin with. It was a depressing thought, to say the least, as she had worked her hands to the bone to be what she never was and this foolish American who wasn't even of her bloodline moved in and became everything she was supposed to be. The truth of the matter was that Miles Edgeworth was indeed a genius, and she achieved everything she currently was by sacrificing things in her life that most others take for granted as opposed to her natural intellect. Not to say she was not of superior intellect compared to the average Larry, mind you, because that'd be false and she was aware of as much. She also knew, however, that she wasn't of von Karma genius like her papa and Miles Edgeworth were, regardless of what her bloodline dictated.
The rain grew heavier, and the sound it made as it hit against the glass window went from a soft tapping to a heavy beating. The thunder continued to rumble outside, but there was no more lightning to be found anywhere in the distance. Looking out the window, she noticed more lights coming on from the other high rise apartments across the streets. Americans were strange - why did they get up and start bustling about their homes just because of a mere thunderstorm? She found it a tad bit foolish, to put it honestly. She was a light sleeper, but at the very worst, the roaring of thunder only woke her up before she drifted back to sleep only moments later.
Not that it was very important, anyway. She didn't come to this country for the people or the legal system or to make a new start. She came here to do what her papa and Miles Edgeworth couldn't do, and that was defeat the man who almost singlehandedly turned their names into nothing but blemishes on the house of von Karma and wiped them both from this planet over the course of a few mere trials.
Chills began to run across the top of her skin with that thought - he was dead. The same Miles Edgeworth who had once snuck into the kitchen at nightfall to fetch her a snack after she had been denied dinner due to being unable to finish an assignment her papa had given her. The same Miles Edgeworth who had weaved and breathed sheer genius, who had been the genius she always wished she was.
The Miles Edgeworth she had once looked upon as a sibling despite not being of von Karma blood was dead. He had chosen death over defeat, like any true member of her house would have. It had broken her heart when she had caught word of the note he left in office 1202, but at the same time it invigorated her - it had filled her with fury she had never felt before in her life. Upon hearing the news of how this lawyer named Phoenix Wright had broken apart her family, she left for America posthaste.
This was not just a matter of avenging the death of Miles Edgeworth - it was even more personal than that. This was her chance to prove herself. She was going to defeat the one man who her father and little brother couldn't defeat. She was going to prove her genius to the world - and most importantly, she was going to prove it to herself that she was as perfect as anyone in the von Karma bloodline, if not moreso.
This was her chance. This was her chance to both simultaneously avenge the death of the man she admired and respected more than anyone she had ever met as well as prove that she was a better prosecutor than he ever was. She was going to be the genius that Miles Edgeworth couldn't be by defeating the one defense attorney that managed to fall his infallible training. This was her destiny - this was everything she had spent her career working her hands to the bone for. She was going to be the one to do what her papa and Miles Edgeworth failed to do! She was going to crush that foolish defense attorney and everything he stood for under her heel!
BANG!
The lights from the tall buildings outside quickly went dark after an exceedingly bright flash of lightning struck the ground below. Franziska felt the cold tile floor beneath her bare feet. She must've stood up while she lost in her thoughts. All of a sudden, sleepiness overcame her - her coffee had grown cold and she had only taken one sip of her drink.
"I must've been sitting there for hours." She dazedly thought to herself. Now that her apartment was dark enough for her body to tell she would be able to get some sleep, the natural reaction was to start shutting down. For good reason, though - she had been up almost all night.
She walked across her apartment and back into her bedroom to lay in bed. The soft embrace of her fine linen sheets rubbing across her back had a welcome touch, and no amount of modern architecture would've been able to prevent her from sleeping when there was no light to let through.
That foolish lawyer was no match for the fury of the prosecuting prodigy known as Franziska von Karma, as a fire burned inside of her. A fire that evoked abnormal amounts of drive and passion out of the young von Karma, and a fire that would burn within her even through the blizzard of a trial.
"See you in court, Mr. Wright…" Franziska said to herself aloud, before she let herself to drift off to sleep and dream dreams of Miles Edgeworth sneaking her granola bars from the pantry like he once did in the days of their youth.