Turnabout Ghosts
By Bluesun13

Disclaimer: The Ace Attorney Series, its characters and other copyrighted material do not belong to me.

Three memories that the Yatagarasu cannot escape.

He'd been a fool. They both had. In this moment, it was one thing that Detective Tyrell Badd was perfectly clear on. The notion came swift, blade-like, and it pierced right through every other thought that had been churning about in his mind.

He held his position, eyes fixed on the small hand-mirror in front of him. He could see everything going on behind him that way—in particular, the gathering cloud of uniformed officers less than three feet from where he stood. Every one of them was staring frontward, eyes and weapons trained on the looming stone structure that comprised the corporate offices of The Webspynner Company.

Yew was going to kill him.

The thought flickered through his mind. She was going to kill both of them-that was, if Byrne made it out of this one alive.

They were getting careless. This night in particular, they'd strayed too far from the line. Nothing had been planned. It had all come at the very last minute. They hadn't even consulted with Yew. There hadn't been time. Byrne had received some troubling information that he'd deemed too urgent to "just sit on." They had to act tonight, he'd insisted. Tyrell could still picture him, face flushed, bursting into his office. It had to be tonight.

But, something had gone amiss. Someone had spotted the Great Thief the Yatagarasu...and now here they were: Detective Tyrell Badd, whose reputation preceded him always-as one driven to capture the thief at any cost-and a firing squad.

Byrne, be careful.

He'd said it as many times as he'd thought it. There'd been the feeling, his gut, his Detective's instinct. Why had he ignored it?

The Yatagarasu...

Not one man.
Not one being.
But, three.
And yet

a single identity.

He began to wonder then, just what might happen if you killed one third of a person. Was it possible for the rest to go on? Certainly, if something happened to Byrne, it would be the end of the Yatagarasu. The Great Thief and all mystery surrounding him was a combination of not only the efforts, but the talents and resources of three individual people: the prosecutor, the detective, the defense attorney. Thus, the Yatagarasu always knew the location of its target, always knew the ins and outs of its defenses, and most importantly never ever left a single shred of evidence behind.

Two hours had passed and nothing had stirred within the Webspynner building. Detective Badd could delay no longer; he would have to send his men in after the thief. He barked orders over the roar of blood rush in his ears and the countdown rhythm of his own heartbeat.

Another two hours would follow in eerie almost silence.

There would be no possibility of getting a message to Yew. He was being watched, now. Not just by his men, but by the news cameras as well. From the moment since he'd received notification that Byrne-that the Yatagarasu had been spotted, he had not been alone.

But surely, by now, she knew. He could almost feel her watching through the screen of a television set somewhere. Could almost hear the venom in her voice. You idiot...

She hated him, that much he knew. She was vengeful and unforgiving—more so than anyone he'd ever known. She'd once told him, outright, that his greatest flaw was his carelessness. While his pride sputtered beneath a stone surface, she added this caveat: Byrne's flaw, she said, was that he was too trusting. Of the two, she'd warned icily, his partner's was the greater offense.

Indeed, she had forgiven neither of them, whether for their flaws or the escape of her sister's killer. Sometimes, the answer was perilously unclear. Even so, the three shared an odd bond. Should something happen to either of them-that would also go unforgiven. The blame, of course, would rest on the surviving party.

Byrne was softer toward her; perhaps because he was so clearly in love with her. It was a fight Tyrell had never been willing to enter into with his partner. In the end, he could never be certain that he was more concerned for his friend than he was in competition for her affection. It was not love, he reasoned. It was unity. Passion. The shared secret that burned brighter than any candle he'd ever held to anyone. Until this, Tyrell's only passion had been his job. There had been no time for love or a family.

In hindsight, he would have loved to have had a daughter-perhaps one like Kay. Wide eyed and exuberant. At the very least, he would always be 'Uncle Badd'.

In his mind he could hear Yew laughing at him. There was a barely detectable difference in the way she laughed when she was mocking someone (it seemed a favorite pastime of hers) and the way she did when something had gotten to her. He wondered if anyone else, even Byrne, noticed. It seemed the only indication she'd allow, that anything affected her at all.
No, that wasn't true.

There was the scream.

The single, terrible, piercing scream that she'd let out when Manny Coachen-her sister's killer-had gone free.

The sound had gone straight into him-cutting through years of hardened exterior. It had coiled around the memory of that trial like a snake; the precise moment when the decision was handed down, that scream, and the look he'd shared with Byrne then. They had shared a revelation: there were limits to what the law could do.

And if something happened to Byrne tonight, he wondered if she'd...

"I came as soon as I heard..."

The man's voice was almost out of place, though it very much should have belonged. To the newsmen, anyway, nothing would have appeared amiss. And even with his mirror-which, he'd nearly dropped-Tyrell Badd had somehow failed to notice his friend's approach.

"Faraday!"

"Why do you look surprised?" Byrne spoke through the gritted teeth of a beaming smile. It was, as much a reprimand as a joke.

The Great Thief...

"So, tell me Detective, have your men found anything of the Yatagarasu?"

Byrne's tone was businesslike, but it retained it's usual almost awkward charisma. Tyrell was torn between pulling the man before him into a rough hug and strangling him with that damned ascot he always insisted on wearing.

He settled on a smile, the relief finally having a chance to set in.

"It seems to have been nothing more than a scare, Mr. Prosecutor."

"Are you sure he hasn't just managed to evade you again, Detective?"

"It's possible; he is a slippery bastard. One of these days, though..."

The next part was mumbled, so as to avoid the looming news crew, still largely uninterested in the appearance of Prosecutor Faraday. "...I'm going to beat the ever living shit out of him."

Byrne grinned widely. A Cheshire cat, straight from a children's story. Though, as he recalled, it was a much darker tale than expected.

"We'll see." Was all he said.

And Tyrell wondered, for the umpteenth time, what he would do if anything ever happened to his friend.