Prompt: Maya looks a little down and Phoenix asks what's wrong. She says it's nothing, just there was something she always used to do with Mia and now of course she can't do it. Phoenix says he'll do it with her. Maya is reluctant but finally agrees.

Turns out the thing she used to do with Mia is tell each other about their monster shits.

"It's just this stupid thing I did with Mia," she said, looking down and twisting her hands together. "Really, Nick, don't worry about it."

Phoenix looked down at this young girl he still hardly even knew - except that she was honest, brave, kind, mentally strong in ways he'd never be. He could certainly see why Mia had loved her so much, and it wasn't even a sense of obligation that had led him to allow her to stick around after her (his, after a point - their? Mia's?) trial was over. True, he wasn't sure he'd have been able to convince her to leave even if he tried, but there was no way he'd ever want to kick Maya out. Quite aside from being Mia's sister, and from that nagging suspicion he had that there wasn't much in Kurain for her if she'd rather stay here with him - she was helpful, and funny, and they got along really really well. Honestly, she was fast becoming one of his best friends, for all they hadn't known one another long.

And every time he saw her cheer slip away... every time she curled in on herself, so obviously remembering the sister she'd never see again... every single time Maya looked sad, Phoenix's whole chest filled up with a fiery determination to make it better.

Grief wasn't that simple, obviously. A lot of time there was nothing he could do. But sometimes, he could help.

"No, go on, you looked all excited. You were practically dancing," he encouraged, making sure to grin. To keep his voice easy. "I'd love to - I mean, if it's okay with you - I'd like to get in on this tradition."

"I don't know... It's kinda weird..." she mumbled. Phoenix scoffed.

"You're right, I'm way too normal to deal with anything 'weird,'" he deadpanned. He leaned back in his chair and stuck his feet on his desk. "You should probably just stick to your chanting in the shower and summoning spirits, like a normal teenaged law office assistant."

"Alright, fine," Maya said. A shy grin crept up her face. "But you can't tell anyone else, okay?"

Phoenix nodded solemnly. And on second thought, leaned forward and stuck out his pinky finger.

It was this position - feet up, chair on two legs, torso stretched forward and arm out to reach across the desk at the same time - that left him vulnerable. His foolish attempt to act all relaxed and cool about joining Maya in this secret mystery tradition she had shared with Mia, it put him in a very dangerous place.

"Okay, so we tell each other all about our huge monster shits," Maya whispered eagerly, eyes sparkling with joy as she leaned in to clasp her pinky with his. "There's a rating system, like -"

Turns out the price for hubris is falling over backwards and forwards at the same time. Phoenix's ass hit the ground hard, his head smashed into the corner of his desk, and the world went black.

-xxx-

The thing was, Maya seemed really happy about it. She seemed excited, for some reason. And since Phoenix would already have died for her if necessary, backing down from something so simple that brought her happiness seemed really just like cowardice at this point, especially after he'd already knocked himself out for two minutes over it. Plus he'd been Larry's friend for a long time now, so he'd kind of had mental preparation. Plus he took pinky promises very seriously.

...Plus he felt like Mia would mock him from beyond the grave if he couldn't handle it. Granted, she'd probably laugh at him either way, but he'd rather be in on the joke than the butt of it.

And there was a lot of butt talk, lately.

Maya was fond of burgers, see. Not just that - big meals in general, hearty ones, a lot of meat. Cheese. She ate a lot of fruit, too, which Phoenix had always thought was healthy but after he broke down and searched "what foods make you poop a lot" it turned out that the main consideration was fiber, which a lot of them provided. Maya was fond of grain-based cereals and porridge. She liked nuts. She might have designed her entire diet based on how 'monster' it made her shits, he really wasn't sure and really needed to stop thinking about it.

He heard enough about it as it was.

"Hey, Niiiiiick," Maya would call sweetly, from the bathroom. "Guess what, this was a total Taisho! Ugh, it's been a while since I had one that big."

Yeah, that ranking system thing. Yeah, it was based on samurai ranks. Phoenix guessed the interest there came from Maya's obsession with the Steel Samurai cartoon, but that still didn't make it any easier to hear someone describing a dump as 'mounted cavalry.'

Still, she always seemed so happy. Her eyes lit up, she'd giggle - really, the whole thing reminded Phoenix of when he and Larry used to tell each other swear words when they were ten. The joy was more in the act of talking about something taboo than anything else.

After actually visiting Kurain, he became convinced that really was it. All the more after meeting Morgan Fey - a woman that strict, raising a free spirit like Maya... Well, it was surprising that she'd restricted herself only to small rebellions like a cartoon and excessive bathroom talk. Even then, the 'rating' system started to seem more like it might have started out as code words, a way to be naughty right under authority's nose. It was a... weirdly cute image.

(His brain still kind of broke picturing Mia ever disappointedly reporting that she'd only had ronins all week, but. She had been a devoted sister, after all. Plus, she'd had that penchant for little mind games sometimes...)

Some small degree of mental health, a portion of the office allowance set aside for bathroom air fresheners, and a newfound love of scrubbing the toilet on a very regular basis - those were all small prices to pay, really. Well, not small exactly, but definitely worth it for that giggle Maya got. For keeping alive a Fey sister tradition, Phoenix would more than willingly endure.

-xxx-

Sometimes he even participated on the sharing end. Not often, nowhere near as often as Maya. Frankly, months and then years down the line he still suspected her of gaming the system with the type of food she ate - either that or her ranking was way too generous compared to his.

But still, sometimes if he was in the bathroom for a while, she'd... lurk. Not obviously, not right outside the door or anything. She wouldn't even stop whatever she was doing. There was just such a sense of anticipation, that he usually couldn't stand it longer than a minute or two and would burst out with "foot-soldier" or "Captain, I think?"

(And then he'd go clean the toilet again.)

The scatological inside joke even ended up being fun for him too, sometimes. Mainly that one time when Edgeworth had been over, and had shown such polite interest upon her cheerily reporting a "real Daimyo in the deep." That time, Phoenix really got it, and yeah, he giggled as much if not more than his friend as they both desperately avoided clarifying what the hell they meant. He ended up escaping claiming the need to check on troop movements and laughed himself silly while cleaning the toilet bowl.

The joke got way less frequent as they both got older, anyway - proving again his theory about it being a 'getting away with it' kind of thing in the first place. Now that she was in a position of authority herself, a capable and mature leader, Maya had no real need to depend on such childish humor. The joke all but disappeared, only to be dusted off on the rare occasion. Usually only when there were other people around to get confused. At least no one had ever caught on yet.

"Hey Nick, the battle was difficult but the Hatamoto carried the day," she'd report with that mischievous gleam in her eye. "There was real carnage left behind, though."

"Well, as long as it's a windy day and no one was hurt," Phoenix grimaced, listening for the fan behind the bathroom door and ignoring Apollo's puzzled mouthing of "hatamoto...?"

"They're talking about poop, Polly," he heard Trucy stage-whispering from behind his back. "Really big poops."

Well. There was that ol' price of hubris again.

(...Is his horror that Maya and I talk about this stuff funny enough to outweigh mine that Trucy knows? I really cannot tell.)