Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in Phoenix Wright.

This is part of a 100 theme project.

Theme 1: Introduction

Maya was late. Phoenix's gut had been nagging away at him all morning, telling him that hiring a teenager was a bad- scratch that, terrible- idea. So while he sat at the front desk, fielding calls from well wishers and the girl that still hadn't figured out that the law office was not a burger place and would never be no matter how many times she called, he kept one nervous eye on the door. Exactly what was keeping her? She had seemed so enthusiastic the day before. But then again, she had signed on at the law office in the after-glow of the trial. Most likely, she had woken up the next morning and realized that she had no business working at a law firm.

The phone rang again and Phoenix picked it up immediately, jarred out of his thoughts. "F- Wright & Co. Law Offices," he said smartly. He got a thrill every time he said those words. Somehow, he had his own firm! Yeah, he was a complete newbie at the whole lawyer thing, he still wasn't sure if his two wins had been complete flukes, and his only employee was a seventeen year old spirit medium, but that was beside the point.

"Iz this dah burger place?" a heavily accented voice asked. Phoenix resisted the urge to toss the phone at the wall.

"No, this isn't the burger place," he said, unable to stop a hint of impatience from creeping into his voice. "Did you check the number again?"

"Oh, me is vah-ree sorry," she said. Phoenix wondered exactly where her accent was from. It certainly didn't sound like any accent he'd ever heard. In fact, her voice sounded a whole lot like….

"Maya?" he said suspiciously.

An impish giggle came from the earpiece, confirming his suspicions. "Gosh, Nick, it took you so long to figure it out," she said breezily. "I called, like, five times."

According to Phoenix's calculations, it was more like ten. "Where are you?" he asked, sneaking yet another look at the clock. It read 11:12, which meant the morning was nearly over.

"Oh, yeah," Maya said, remembering what she had called for in the first place. "Could you do me a favor?"

Phoenix, not suspecting the magnitude of the favor he was about to be coerced into doing, agreed. It wasn't like he was particularly busy anyway. "Yeah, sure, what do you want?"

"Could you come down to the buffet place around the corner? I saw that they had a grand opening special this morning and couldn't resist," she said cheerfully. "Did you know that they serve burgers for breakfast? Breakfast, Nick! It's so cool! Anyway, I came in here and got all my food and stuff but I totally didn't realize that I forgot my wallet! So could you come bail me out?"

Phoenix slumped a bit in his chair and mentally went through the contents of his wallet. He probably had enough to pay for the meal. Maybe. "Yeah, I'll do it," he replied reluctantly.

"Thanks! We should totally eat lunch here!" He could hear chewing on the line and could imagine her digging into a burger. But girls her size couldn't eat too much, right? It wouldn't be that expensive. "By the way Nick, why are you answering the phone? Shouldn't have a secretary or something now that the company is named after you?"

Phoenix refrained from pointing out that she was supposed to be the secretary, considering she had no other useful job skills. He had gone to law school, dammit! She may have had latent spiritual powers, but that meant diddly-squat in the office! He bid her a hasty goodbye, not pointing out any of those important facts, and hung up the phone.

Later, after he had paid for four burgers for her, dragged her away from the restaurant, and tried to get her to do some actual work only to have her wriggle out of responsibility each and every time, he decided that Maya should have given herself a better introduction when he first met her. (Then again, when he had first met her she had been dragged away on suspicion of murder.) Perhaps something that went like this would have been better:

"Hi! I'm Maya! I'm seventeen, a spirit medium, and I'm going to eat you out of house and home. I'm working for you only technically, so you're going to feed me and stuff, but I'm only here to keep you company. And annoy you. But don't worry, you can never stay mad at me for some reason, so you should just resign yourself to always having me around. I'm sure we'll have lots of fun together!"

A/N: Short chapter, but I enjoyed writing it. Hope you liked it!