The cat plushie found its way into Franziska's hands rather unexpectedly. One moment she was ordering tea, and the next, there it was in her bag. A dark-haired woman was leaving the shop.
"Madam, you've foolishly—" she tried to say, but when the woman turned, the gravity of her expression struck Franziska silent.
"I have a feeling you could use a companion," she said, gesturing with her walking stick, a glowing gem set atop it, and Franziska almost startled. She would have, had it not been for years of Papa's instruction.
As it was, she coolly met the woman's eyes: Icy teal against a dark, secretive slate. "Do I look like a child to you?" Franziska sneered.
"Of course not," the woman replied, her eyes piercing Franziska's. "Please hold onto it for me. A favor to a stranger."
Spellbound, Franziska nodded, and it wasn't until later that her mind cleared, and she recognized the illogic of the request. The woman was long gone. "Verdammt," she swore.
The truth was, she was rather lonely—no, solitary, she corrected. Her Papa was in prison and awaiting execution. Her little brother had chosen death, those five terrible words all that remained of him. That night, she set the cat on her desk. It looked back at her with beady little eyes.
It was a cute little toy, its fur a soft, muted grey and long white whiskers on its cheeks. Pink paw pads decorated its four paws. Its face was open and innocent, waiting.
"As you can see, I live here," Franziska said to it. "But why am I foolishly telling you that? You're a toy! I've grown foolish," she grumbled, holding her head. She poured herself a scotch and went straight to sleep.
That night, she dreamed of being tossed about on towering waves, water closing over her head and fading light. She woke sweaty and dismayed, with the cat clutched in her arms.
Papa's execution was the worst thing she'd ever witnessed, and the one she couldn't bear to miss. Franziska sat behind the curtained glass, hands clenched tightly, and waited an eternity.
Abruptly, the curtains rose. There was her father, bound and strapped him to a gurney. He wasn't even blindfolded, and his wild-eyed gaze found hers right away, flashing with anger and humiliation. She stared, unblinking, as he fought to stay awake, watched long after his eyes fell closed, watched until his breathing stopped, and the wardens came to collect his body.
The only thing worse than watching Papa die was never seeing him again. Franziska remained stiff and dry-eyed the whole long, miserable flight back. When she at last threw herself into her bed, she tossed and turned, dreaming of nooses crackling with electric current. When she awoke, the cat's fur matted with her tears, and she gripped it so tightly she could feel her own heartbeat reverberating through the plush.
For a week, she went to bed restlessly, and woke from fitful to find the cat in her bed. On the seventh night, she relented and tucked the toy under her arm.
In her dreams, she was thirteen years old again, brimming with the delight of her first court appearance and victory, standing in a courtroom bright with sunlight and faded around the edges, like a lovely drawing in a book of fairy tales. Papa voice was quiet and proud when he spoke.
You'll make a fine prosecutor, 'Ziska.
Thank you, Papa, she replied, beaming at the rare informality of her nickname. He placed a hand on her shoulder, wrinkled with age. They stood together bathed in twinkling sunshine until the scene dissolved into dreamless sleep.
Then, Miles came back.
Franziska clung to anger as tightly as she could hold it. "How dare you show your face to me without a shred of shame upon it!" she shrieked.
"I hear you are having a rough time maintaining perfection in this country," he replied, unbothered, as if that's all it was. All it ever was.
You've been dead for a year, she didn't say. I mourned you, swallowed into silence. She ground her teeth, took the bullet, and saw Engarde packed behind bars. She left without a word.
"Where are you going, Franziska?" Miles caught up to her at the airport.
She didn't turn around, wouldn't look him in the eye. "You've always left me alone and walked on ahead without me. Miles Edgeworth. I've always hated you," she declared coldly, disappearing from view.
A year had passed when she woke up to soft, warm paw pads on her face. It was an otherwise ordinary morning. "What, what is it?" Franziska groaned, sitting up.
A living, breathing cat stood before her. Grey fur. Violet eyes.
"Aaaaah!" Franziska gasped, flinging herself out of bed and crashing to the floor. She stared up at the cat in shock.
The cat sat placidly on the bed, washing its paws.
"Y-y-you—!" Franziska stammered.
"Mewww?" the cat replied, hopping down from the bed. It circled all around Franziska and rubbed its face on her pajamas.
"No!" Franziska sputtered, dumping the cat back on the bed and ignoring the angry yowl. "You will not shed fur on my clothes! My toy has not come to life I will find your owner after work, and for now, you shall stay put!"
She hastily set out some fish and water, went to the office, and put it firmly from her mind. It wasn't until that evening that she realized—
"Shit," she mumbled, hoping the cat had not done just that.
It hadn't. The house was spotless, the cat sitting quietly by the window. "At least you're neat," Franziska sighed, setting out a new litter box and food bowl in the bathroom. She ignored the cat until bedtime, when it jumped up neatly and settled down at her side, paws tucked under its body. "I suppose you'll need a name," Franziska relented. "We'll call you Tea. Papa would think me foolish, but at least you'll bear a dignified name."
Her phone rang around midnight, a ringtone she recognized immediately. "Miles Edgeworth," she barked into it. "If you are calling at this hour, I can only assume you've disgraced yourself again—"
"Please, Franziska, I need your help," Miles's voice said through the phone, panting for breath and deadly serious. Franziska's words died in her throat, and her heart hammered in her ears. The gurney. . . the note. . . .
"Where?" she asked quietly.
"Hazakura Temple," came the reply. "Fran—"
Franziska hung up. She drew in a deep, ragged breath and glared at the room, at her phone, at no one in particular—
"Mrow?"
Franziska glared at her cat. "His foolhardy mishaps are none of my concern," she said through gritted teeth.
Tea bumped her head into Franziska's hand. Reluctantly, she smoothed the soft fur on her head.
"If he's returned to Japanifornia, it can only mean that silly defense attorney is to blame," she mused.
A deep, rumbling purr echoed from Tea's chest. Idly, Franziska scratched at the base of her tail.
"He's disgraced the von Karma name. He's a fool if he thinks I'm flying out to rescue him—aah!"
She'd scratched a bit too roughly. Tea jumped up and hissed, batting her hand away with a paw raised overhead, claws bared in a hint of warning. The paw came to rest on Franziska's shoulder, and suddenly, vividly, she remembered a scene from her childhood, or perhaps from a dream—
Sunlight streaming through a window. Papa smiling proudly with his hand on her shoulder.
"You're right," Franziska murmured shakily, coming back to the present. "He's my little brother, however much of a fool he is. . . I haven't much family left."
Still trembling, she fired off a quick text to Miles. Send me everything I need to know, and not a word more. She stood and began to pack.
Franziska shrugged off Miles at the temple. "I'm here to do my own investigating, Miles Edgeworth!" she snarled, "so stay out of my way until tomorrow, when you embarrass yourself further with that farce of a stunt!"
"Ah, it may not be me doing the embarrassing. . . ." Miles trailed off, perplexed. His eyes darted to her hand, incongruously holding a leash instead of her customary whip.
To his credit, he managed not to stare too long at the cat-and-harness attached to the leash. He didn't laugh, although his lips did twist oddly. Franziska promptly stomped off through the snow, Tea trotting neatly at her side, chest puffed and tail held high.
She let out a deep breath the moment they were out of sight. "What a perfect girl," she cooed, admiring Tea's proud expression and perfect posture. "It's a good thing someone here"—a scowl behind her, in Miles's direction—"knows how to conduct herself befitting a von Karma! You're the only companion I need." She slipped Tea a treat before heading to the bridge.
The case itself seemed simple enough: A witness firsthand account of the victim in the snow, seven-pronged sword protruding from her back, the accused holding the handle. So the victim hadn't seen the weapon going in—that could hardly matter. It wasn't like anyone else was around. She did pause wonder at the strange violet orb Tea uncovered by the bridge. It was probably just some temple detritus, though there did seem something uncanny about it.
Franziska seethed while the judge declared another day of investigation. Nothing came easily where that accursed Phoenix Wright was concerned. He wasn't even defending! She seethed from a distance while Phoenix Wright comforted her little brother, and she watched with barely-suppressed bitterness while he trooped to the precinct and back to detangle Wright's absurd love life.
Miles hadn't bothered to tell her he was alive.
After the case concluded, she returned to her bed-and-breakfast with resigned detachment. She threw her clothes at random into her suitcase. She picked up the harness.
"Tea!" she called.
Silence. Franziska frowned and scanned the room. The window was ajar, with a trail of pawprints leading away.
She followed the pawprints all the way to the temple's courtyard. "Where's my cat?" she hissed at Phoenix Wright, accompanied by the crack of her whip.
"Yowch! I don't know!" Phoenix yelled, raising his arms to shield his face. Franziska looked closer and noted the fresh scratches on his hand. "I saw her maybe an hour ago. She scratched me and took off away from here. She really is your cat," he added, pointing at the scratches.
"She is every inch a von Karma," Franziska said with superiority, before dashing out of the courtyard. On the trail, she passed Maya and Pearl.
"Oh, are you looking for your cat?" Maya asked, smiling. "She headed toward the bridge."
"She really likes Mystic Maya," Pearl added happily. "She purred when we pet her!"
That was acceptable, Franziska decided. Consorting with the Feys was acceptable, so long as it wasn't the foolish attorney, or the coffee-obsessed maniac, or—
In the inner temple's courtyard, she found Tea in the arms of the one person she least wanted to see. Miles Edgeworth stood and stared at her, mouth working around a loss for words.
"They say that the inner temple is a sanctum of rebirth," he settled on, a hand touching the lantern. "Though I did not expect them to mean quite literally channeling the dead. Franziska, I must thank y—"
"I understand if you do not wish to be my little brother," Franziska interrupted harshly. "You had no choice in it. Our house was not kind to you. . . Papa nor myself. And. . ." She drew a shaky breath, determined not to cry, the sterile room and the gurney garish in her mind's vision, her heart heavy with all the days after. "I must remind you of your father's killer."
The façade cracked. Miles looked years older when dropped his gaze to the ground, hand twitching for his elbow in a gesture he could never quite control. "I wasn't much of a brother to you, was I," he huffed. "I may have been older, but you were right to call yourself the big sister. . . you took care of me."
Franziska nodded, her throat closed and tight.
"I never did think of you in my grief," Miles continued. "Not then, not now, and not. . . two years ago, when I. . . fled." He drew himself up and looked Franziska in the eyes. "I apologize," he said. "My father's death was the single worst event in my life—"
Franziska squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the final blow.
"—and gaining you as my sister was the best. I cannot be a von Karma, but I am proud to be your little brother, if you'll continue to allow it," Miles finished, gently, affectionately.
". . . fool," Franziska murmured, trembling. "Haven't you disgraced yourself enough without saying such foolish things?" But her eyes were wet as she held out a hand, and Miles took it. Snow and leaves swirled around them, a new promise.
A small smile crept over Miles's face. "I suppose I must concede the theme of rebirth," he said. "I'll be in touch."
Fransizka smiled too. "Be well, little brother," she said.
It wasn't until she was back home in her German mansion that she found the orb, tangled in a sock and a nightgown. Tea swatted it onto the floor and into her nest and curled around it, purring.
"A von Karma is not a common thief!" Franziska groaned in exasperation. She briefly considered mailing it back to the precinct, only to be stopped by Tea's pleading expression. "Nothing to be done for it," she sighed. "I suppose it's yours now."
