application for sirenspull
TONS OF SPOILERS FOR ACE ATTORNEY: INVESTIGATIONS!
DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE GAME!
still interested? then--
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ace Attorney
Canon Format: Video game
Character's Name: Calisto Yew; not her real name, but the alias by which she’s known in this canon point.
Character's Age: Approximately twenty-two; again, this could be a total fib, just like her name (and I’m kind of inclined to believe that it is), but it'll do.
What form will your character's NV take? A regular sleek black smartphone; something portable and easily hidden. Like this!
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
Nothing superhuman, but she possesses quite the perfect skill set for working undercover: the ability to think on her feet as well as to construct detailed plans far in advance; a high level of intelligence; the ability to lie and manipulate others; a talent for seamlessly metamorphosing into whatever persona she needs to embody for however long she needs to do so.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them?
Her laugh - a pretty defining characteristic of hers - will eventually, at its peak, have the ability to temporarily (maybe just for a few hours) drive the person at whom it’s directed insane. At first it will just fluster and momentarily distract the other person from their train of thought - and frankly, that’s already a canon effect for most people - but will, once it’s developed fully, be able to directly affect a character’s brain for an extended period of time.
Weapons: A small, black handgun, fully loaded.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
Okay, her history is remarkably sparse (this section is going to be comprised mainly of the circumstances by which she became involved in the central plot), so please, bear with me.
Virtually nothing is known of ‘Calisto’s’ history before her appearance in 5-4, save for the fact that she got involved with an international smuggling ring (more on that in a minute) at a (presumably) young age, and became a defense attorney around the same time (or possibly before? This is one of the things that makes me think that maybe Calisto’s age is perhaps a bit higher than the one she presents - though, hey, with the abundance of teenage prosecutors in the series, who knows).
Anyway, so, this smuggling ring was thriving, but two men - a prosecutor, Byrne Faraday, and a detective, Tyrell Badd - decided that this wasn’t kosher with them, and they started investigating deeper into the ring, eventually finding out that a successful corporation called the Amano Group (led by one Ernest Amano) was involved with it. Fortunately for Badd and Faraday, one of its employees, named Cece Yew, found evidence of the group’s involvement with the ring and went to the police about what she’d found. Due to the violent and unforgiving nature of the smuggling ring’s attitude toward traitors, Badd was directed to vigilantly protect Cece until she would be able to testify.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. The leader of the smuggling ring (quick note here - there’s a country in the AA world called Cohdopia, which went through a period of civil unrest around 2010 and subsequently split into two countries, Allebahst and Babahl - the leader of the smuggling ring was the ambassador to Cohdopia and, later, the ambassador to Allebahst), Quercus Alba, sent one of his agents, Manny Coachen, to kill Cece. He was successful, but was caught on camera entering Yew’s apartment with a knife, and was arrested for her murder.
Coachen faced trial soon after, and Faraday (who was set to prosecute the case) thought the case was pretty much in the bag - video evidence is pretty hard to dispute, right? Alas, the Amano Group had other ideas; the night before the trial, they sent someone in to steal the videotape, and without it, the prosecution had no case - Coachen went free.
This is where this character comes in - Alba had sent one of his agents in (no real name given) to pose as ‘Calisto Yew,’ Cece’s ‘older sister.’ She was in the courtroom when the verdict was read, and let out a wail of despair - this is how Badd and Faraday first noticed her. After this particular failure (which would come to be referred to as the KG-8 incident), Badd and Faraday decided that they would achieve much more success if they were able to work outside the confines of the law, thus shakily beginning to form what would later become known as the Yatagarasu - a ‘Great Thief’ who stole incriminating documents from corrupt corporations and used them to expose their shady dealings to the world.
“First! The Yatagarasu always knows the exact location of the target object.
Second! The Yatagarasu always knows exactly how to disarm the security system.
Third! The Yatagarasu doesn’t leave a single shred of evidence behind, ever!”
- Tyrell Badd
Badd and Faraday approached Yew after the KG-8 incident about joining them, but she declined; however, after they had begun to successfully work against the ring, she was ordered to join their group as a mole in order to ensure that they never actually discovered who the leader of the smuggling ring was. Due to the multi-faceted nature of their setup (the three members of the group each represented one aspect of the law and were thus able to contribute bits of information and skills that ordinary civilians would be unable to - due to her position as a defense attorney, Calisto was able to provide information about the corrupt corporations that approached her for help; Faraday possessed knowledge of ways to disable security devices within buildings and also had a device called the Little Thief, which could virtually recreate any crime scene/location as long as it had some knowledge of the dimensions and circumstances of the area in question; and as the lead detective on the ongoing Yatagarasu case, Badd was able to ensure that no evidence was left for the police to collect), the Yatagarasu enjoyed a fair bit of success.
One day, though - despite Calisto’s best efforts - they got a little too close to the truth by infiltrating the Cohdopian Embassy and retrieving evidence that would have conclusively linked the embassy with the smuggling ring; Faraday was consequently (finally) seen as a real threat, and she was ordered to get rid of him. At around the same time, a man named Deid Mann (not Ace Attorney’s cleverest of name puns, to be sure), who worked at the Cohdopian Embassy, offered to testify to the existence of a connection between the embassy and the smuggling ring - Calisto was ordered to silence him as well.
So! She hired a hit man named Mack Rell to kill Deid Mann before he could testify - he did so, but was the incident was caught on a surveillance tape, and he was arrested for the murder. Sound familiar? I thought so -- this incident would soon receive the nickname ‘the second KG-8 incident’ due to its similarities to the actual KG-8 incident that had happened three years prior. When he was arrested, Rell claimed to be the Yatagarasu (also on Calisto’s orders), which understandably caused a bit of commotion. Calisto took his case, naturally, and instructed him to accuse Faraday of being the Yatagarasu in order to discredit him - in exchange, she guaranteed him an acquittal.
The events that take place afterward are summed up in a much more succinct way than I could ever hope to do here!
And that (technically) was the last anyone ever saw of ‘Calisto Yew’!
Point in Canon:
About a day after the events of 5-4. She thinks she’s gotten away scot-free, but then …
Character Personality:
Considering the fact that ‘Calisto Yew’ is nothing but a façade with a history and motivations that are completely fabricated, one might assume that her personality traits are just as fake. However, I believe (largely due to some of her behavior once she is revealed as Shih-na that is consistent with the Calisto persona), that some of her characteristics are natural to her, and not just a part of this constructed personality. Whatever the case may be, though, I’ll just detail the attributes that are the most prominent in her personality, as this is the one I’d be playing.
To a casual onlooker, Calisto may seem to swing randomly between cool confidence (blunt and honest, sometimes to a fault) and passionate amusement, and on a shallow, technical level, they would be correct. However, while she does find most things genuinely comical (and I’m inclined to believe that it is ‘most’ rather than just ‘some,' and very possibly even more than that), her laughter does, at times, serve other purposes, ones much deeper and more complex than one would initially assume.
She’s an expert at deflection, constantly avoiding topics that she’d rather not discuss - ones that would be ‘too personal’ or (more commonly) ones that would go a long way toward incriminating her. When she and Edgeworth are debating back and forth in 5-4, she often abruptly changes the subject (most commonly through the use of both topic derailment and pointed insults) in order to create confusion and evade potential traps. This extends even to the point of deliberately giving false answers and misleading responses in order to gauge the other person’s reaction - whether or not she eventually comes clean about the truth is, of course, at least partially dependent upon that.
Now that I’ve gone on for a while about her behaviors and mannerisms, I’ll touch on her motivations, which will be the shortest section of all, because they are quite simple and straightforward - she values her job and the thrills that she can obtain while fulfilling her mission, and nothing more. She has no emotional attachments, no familial bonds, nothing to keep her tied down aside from her job and its successful completion; she has no qualms about betraying anyone and everyone, should it become necessary (for example: Byrne Faraday, whom she’d worked with for three years before stabbing him in the back (or, in this case, the front) without any hesitation, as she’d been ordered to do). It’s nothing personal - only business. This isn’t to say that she might not have preferred things to work out differently, or that she hasn’t had to do things that she would’ve liked to avoid, but she has no regrets. Nothing really matters to her beyond the thrill of her exploits - everything else is just a joke.
Character Plans:
It’s an odd situation to be thrust into, so Calisto’s initial weeks here would be spent collecting information, learning as much as she can about the city - how it runs, what its origins are, what the monsters are like, etc etc. I imagine she’ll be pinged pretty hard by the two corporations - it’s where her skill set lies, after all - and once she hears about them, she’d want to learn as much as she could about them and perhaps cast her lot in with one (or, more likely, both) of them.
Appearance/PB: X
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
voice;
(After the NV clicks on, a series of beeps are heard, sounding at a steadily increasing volume and length, giving the listener the distinct impression that perhaps the one causing them is doing so deliberately. Before too long, however, the beeping stops and a low but unmistakably female voice begins to laugh -- and then speak.)
Phwwwwh! Hardly rolled out the red carpet, did they?
(There’s a bit of shuffling, followed by very faint footsteps, as if the person holding the device is walking around.)
You'd think with all of the trouble they would've had to go to in order to bring me here, they'd at least greet me with a glass of champagne or something!
(Another muffled noise sounds as she shifts the NV from one hand to the other.)
If anyone's listening, let me know where the party is, would you? I'd hate to think that I was missing out on any fun.
Third Person Sample
And with a few bullets fired into the air of the courthouse (she wasn't aiming to kill, no, not this time -- if she were, she wouldn't have missed), 'Calisto Yew' was dead.
By this time tomorrow (or perhaps not for a few days - the ring, despite being founded in illegitimacy, still had its own form of frustrating bureaucracy that was distressingly (or laughably, depending on your opinion) similar to the organizations it infiltrated), she would have a new appearance, a new history, new mannerisms and a new objective, shedding this persona for one that would make her virtually unrecognizable. It would be simple to do, she knew, both in practice and in mindset, but she would be lying if she said she wouldn't miss this one, just a little; after all, she’d spent a long three years as the sister of Cece Yew, the defense attorney spurred on by grief to bring down those deplorable criminals who thought they’d be able to get away, scot-free, with such immoral behavior - how funny, she thought, that they had, all thanks to her hard work. She wondered if Badd would be able to appreciate the irony, and feels herself begin to laugh.
“Phwwh--” she clamps a hand over her mouth at that, though, not allowing herself to go any further; ruining her cover so early in the game simply wouldn’t do; she had the feeling that wherever she'd be sent next most likely wouldn't allow for such open amusement.
DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE GAME!
still interested? then--
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ace Attorney
Canon Format: Video game
Character's Name: Calisto Yew; not her real name, but the alias by which she’s known in this canon point.
Character's Age: Approximately twenty-two; again, this could be a total fib, just like her name (and I’m kind of inclined to believe that it is), but it'll do.
What form will your character's NV take? A regular sleek black smartphone; something portable and easily hidden. Like this!
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities:
Nothing superhuman, but she possesses quite the perfect skill set for working undercover: the ability to think on her feet as well as to construct detailed plans far in advance; a high level of intelligence; the ability to lie and manipulate others; a talent for seamlessly metamorphosing into whatever persona she needs to embody for however long she needs to do so.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them?
Her laugh - a pretty defining characteristic of hers - will eventually, at its peak, have the ability to temporarily (maybe just for a few hours) drive the person at whom it’s directed insane. At first it will just fluster and momentarily distract the other person from their train of thought - and frankly, that’s already a canon effect for most people - but will, once it’s developed fully, be able to directly affect a character’s brain for an extended period of time.
Weapons: A small, black handgun, fully loaded.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
Okay, her history is remarkably sparse (this section is going to be comprised mainly of the circumstances by which she became involved in the central plot), so please, bear with me.
Virtually nothing is known of ‘Calisto’s’ history before her appearance in 5-4, save for the fact that she got involved with an international smuggling ring (more on that in a minute) at a (presumably) young age, and became a defense attorney around the same time (or possibly before? This is one of the things that makes me think that maybe Calisto’s age is perhaps a bit higher than the one she presents - though, hey, with the abundance of teenage prosecutors in the series, who knows).
Anyway, so, this smuggling ring was thriving, but two men - a prosecutor, Byrne Faraday, and a detective, Tyrell Badd - decided that this wasn’t kosher with them, and they started investigating deeper into the ring, eventually finding out that a successful corporation called the Amano Group (led by one Ernest Amano) was involved with it. Fortunately for Badd and Faraday, one of its employees, named Cece Yew, found evidence of the group’s involvement with the ring and went to the police about what she’d found. Due to the violent and unforgiving nature of the smuggling ring’s attitude toward traitors, Badd was directed to vigilantly protect Cece until she would be able to testify.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. The leader of the smuggling ring (quick note here - there’s a country in the AA world called Cohdopia, which went through a period of civil unrest around 2010 and subsequently split into two countries, Allebahst and Babahl - the leader of the smuggling ring was the ambassador to Cohdopia and, later, the ambassador to Allebahst), Quercus Alba, sent one of his agents, Manny Coachen, to kill Cece. He was successful, but was caught on camera entering Yew’s apartment with a knife, and was arrested for her murder.
Coachen faced trial soon after, and Faraday (who was set to prosecute the case) thought the case was pretty much in the bag - video evidence is pretty hard to dispute, right? Alas, the Amano Group had other ideas; the night before the trial, they sent someone in to steal the videotape, and without it, the prosecution had no case - Coachen went free.
This is where this character comes in - Alba had sent one of his agents in (no real name given) to pose as ‘Calisto Yew,’ Cece’s ‘older sister.’ She was in the courtroom when the verdict was read, and let out a wail of despair - this is how Badd and Faraday first noticed her. After this particular failure (which would come to be referred to as the KG-8 incident), Badd and Faraday decided that they would achieve much more success if they were able to work outside the confines of the law, thus shakily beginning to form what would later become known as the Yatagarasu - a ‘Great Thief’ who stole incriminating documents from corrupt corporations and used them to expose their shady dealings to the world.
“First! The Yatagarasu always knows the exact location of the target object.
Second! The Yatagarasu always knows exactly how to disarm the security system.
Third! The Yatagarasu doesn’t leave a single shred of evidence behind, ever!”
- Tyrell Badd
Badd and Faraday approached Yew after the KG-8 incident about joining them, but she declined; however, after they had begun to successfully work against the ring, she was ordered to join their group as a mole in order to ensure that they never actually discovered who the leader of the smuggling ring was. Due to the multi-faceted nature of their setup (the three members of the group each represented one aspect of the law and were thus able to contribute bits of information and skills that ordinary civilians would be unable to - due to her position as a defense attorney, Calisto was able to provide information about the corrupt corporations that approached her for help; Faraday possessed knowledge of ways to disable security devices within buildings and also had a device called the Little Thief, which could virtually recreate any crime scene/location as long as it had some knowledge of the dimensions and circumstances of the area in question; and as the lead detective on the ongoing Yatagarasu case, Badd was able to ensure that no evidence was left for the police to collect), the Yatagarasu enjoyed a fair bit of success.
One day, though - despite Calisto’s best efforts - they got a little too close to the truth by infiltrating the Cohdopian Embassy and retrieving evidence that would have conclusively linked the embassy with the smuggling ring; Faraday was consequently (finally) seen as a real threat, and she was ordered to get rid of him. At around the same time, a man named Deid Mann (not Ace Attorney’s cleverest of name puns, to be sure), who worked at the Cohdopian Embassy, offered to testify to the existence of a connection between the embassy and the smuggling ring - Calisto was ordered to silence him as well.
So! She hired a hit man named Mack Rell to kill Deid Mann before he could testify - he did so, but was the incident was caught on a surveillance tape, and he was arrested for the murder. Sound familiar? I thought so -- this incident would soon receive the nickname ‘the second KG-8 incident’ due to its similarities to the actual KG-8 incident that had happened three years prior. When he was arrested, Rell claimed to be the Yatagarasu (also on Calisto’s orders), which understandably caused a bit of commotion. Calisto took his case, naturally, and instructed him to accuse Faraday of being the Yatagarasu in order to discredit him - in exchange, she guaranteed him an acquittal.
The events that take place afterward are summed up in a much more succinct way than I could ever hope to do here!
And that (technically) was the last anyone ever saw of ‘Calisto Yew’!
Point in Canon:
About a day after the events of 5-4. She thinks she’s gotten away scot-free, but then …
Character Personality:
Considering the fact that ‘Calisto Yew’ is nothing but a façade with a history and motivations that are completely fabricated, one might assume that her personality traits are just as fake. However, I believe (largely due to some of her behavior once she is revealed as Shih-na that is consistent with the Calisto persona), that some of her characteristics are natural to her, and not just a part of this constructed personality. Whatever the case may be, though, I’ll just detail the attributes that are the most prominent in her personality, as this is the one I’d be playing.
To a casual onlooker, Calisto may seem to swing randomly between cool confidence (blunt and honest, sometimes to a fault) and passionate amusement, and on a shallow, technical level, they would be correct. However, while she does find most things genuinely comical (and I’m inclined to believe that it is ‘most’ rather than just ‘some,' and very possibly even more than that), her laughter does, at times, serve other purposes, ones much deeper and more complex than one would initially assume.
She’s an expert at deflection, constantly avoiding topics that she’d rather not discuss - ones that would be ‘too personal’ or (more commonly) ones that would go a long way toward incriminating her. When she and Edgeworth are debating back and forth in 5-4, she often abruptly changes the subject (most commonly through the use of both topic derailment and pointed insults) in order to create confusion and evade potential traps. This extends even to the point of deliberately giving false answers and misleading responses in order to gauge the other person’s reaction - whether or not she eventually comes clean about the truth is, of course, at least partially dependent upon that.
Now that I’ve gone on for a while about her behaviors and mannerisms, I’ll touch on her motivations, which will be the shortest section of all, because they are quite simple and straightforward - she values her job and the thrills that she can obtain while fulfilling her mission, and nothing more. She has no emotional attachments, no familial bonds, nothing to keep her tied down aside from her job and its successful completion; she has no qualms about betraying anyone and everyone, should it become necessary (for example: Byrne Faraday, whom she’d worked with for three years before stabbing him in the back (or, in this case, the front) without any hesitation, as she’d been ordered to do). It’s nothing personal - only business. This isn’t to say that she might not have preferred things to work out differently, or that she hasn’t had to do things that she would’ve liked to avoid, but she has no regrets. Nothing really matters to her beyond the thrill of her exploits - everything else is just a joke.
Character Plans:
It’s an odd situation to be thrust into, so Calisto’s initial weeks here would be spent collecting information, learning as much as she can about the city - how it runs, what its origins are, what the monsters are like, etc etc. I imagine she’ll be pinged pretty hard by the two corporations - it’s where her skill set lies, after all - and once she hears about them, she’d want to learn as much as she could about them and perhaps cast her lot in with one (or, more likely, both) of them.
Appearance/PB: X
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
voice;
(After the NV clicks on, a series of beeps are heard, sounding at a steadily increasing volume and length, giving the listener the distinct impression that perhaps the one causing them is doing so deliberately. Before too long, however, the beeping stops and a low but unmistakably female voice begins to laugh -- and then speak.)
Phwwwwh! Hardly rolled out the red carpet, did they?
(There’s a bit of shuffling, followed by very faint footsteps, as if the person holding the device is walking around.)
You'd think with all of the trouble they would've had to go to in order to bring me here, they'd at least greet me with a glass of champagne or something!
(Another muffled noise sounds as she shifts the NV from one hand to the other.)
If anyone's listening, let me know where the party is, would you? I'd hate to think that I was missing out on any fun.
Third Person Sample
And with a few bullets fired into the air of the courthouse (she wasn't aiming to kill, no, not this time -- if she were, she wouldn't have missed), 'Calisto Yew' was dead.
By this time tomorrow (or perhaps not for a few days - the ring, despite being founded in illegitimacy, still had its own form of frustrating bureaucracy that was distressingly (or laughably, depending on your opinion) similar to the organizations it infiltrated), she would have a new appearance, a new history, new mannerisms and a new objective, shedding this persona for one that would make her virtually unrecognizable. It would be simple to do, she knew, both in practice and in mindset, but she would be lying if she said she wouldn't miss this one, just a little; after all, she’d spent a long three years as the sister of Cece Yew, the defense attorney spurred on by grief to bring down those deplorable criminals who thought they’d be able to get away, scot-free, with such immoral behavior - how funny, she thought, that they had, all thanks to her hard work. She wondered if Badd would be able to appreciate the irony, and feels herself begin to laugh.
“Phwwh--” she clamps a hand over her mouth at that, though, not allowing herself to go any further; ruining her cover so early in the game simply wouldn’t do; she had the feeling that wherever she'd be sent next most likely wouldn't allow for such open amusement.