History Recap / AceAttorneyInvestigationsMilesEdgeworth

Gumshoe refused to relent even when pressured by Edgeworth, Franziska, ''and'' the Judge, but the little girl reappeared, still trying to kick Edgeworth. She gave her name as Kay Faraday, Byrne Faraday's daughter, and claimed to be furious because he was mistreating "Gummy;" he was able to pacify her by giving back the Swiss Roll she'd bought -- for her daddy. As she burst into tears, Edgeworth felt a growing sympathy since her story was so similar to his own. He knelt down to offer her a handkerchief, only for her to blow her nose on his cravat instead. She told them that was going to keep her promises to her father: one was "never cry in front of strangers," and another was "never take anything from a stranger." Edgeworth offered her his now-soiled cravat under the legal fiction that she was just 'borrowing' it to wash and return later. Now Gumshoe's motive for hiding her presence in the hallway was clear: technically speaking, she had taken some of his money to buy the Swiss Rolls, and he didn't want anyone to know she'd broken her promise.

Attention then turned to the missing cell phone. Franziska was able to locate it by the simple trick of calling it. It had been stashed in Ms. Teneiro's locker. Edgeworth surmised that it had been hidden because it contained evidence, like a photo, and Franziska was able to recover the data since the phone was not too badly damaged. It showed the cargo hold before the stop at Zheng Fa, and the last, damning piece of evidence: boxes of cloth labeled in Borginian. Edgeworth easily perceived how this put the final nail in Ms. Meele's coffin -- anyone needing to wipe up a bloodstain in a hurry would reach for any cloth they could find, but they didn't use the crate which was clearly marked "Bedsheets." The crate of Borginian cloth was used because it was being unloaded in Zheng Fa, thus eliminating the evidence, and and only someone who could read Borginian could make a decision like this, like Cammy. And for further proof, the police would just have to contact Zheng Fa and ask if their cargo was tampered with.

Cammy Meele was a member of an art smuggling ring, using her skills as a flight attendant fluent in languages to help with smuggling artifacts and forging documents. Their latest target was the famous Alif Red statue, and she forged a document for Zinc Lablanc II to make him believe it was onboard at the time.\\

However, on this particular flight, Interpol Agent Akeby Hicks was there to investigate the smuggling route and asked her to escort him to the cargo hold. As he was Interpol, she couldn't refuse him and led him there, where he started taking pictures of the empty cargo hold. Not wanting the route to exposed, she pushed him off the railing, where he died on impact.\\

With the dead body now on hand, Cammy knew she had to frame someone else as the body would easily be discovered, and settled on Rhoda Teneiro. But first, she had to ensure no one would realize the cargo hold was the real scene of the crime. She used Borginian Cloth to clean up the blood as it would be unloaded in Zheng Fa so no one would realize it was tampered with, and once the plane made the stop in Zheng Fa, a rather obvious fake Alif Red Statue was loaded onto where Agent Hicks landed, removing any further suspicion.\\

Now it was time for Cammy to frame Ms. Teneiro. She first planted Agent Hicks' phone in Ms. Teneiro's locker and stole the elevator keycard to make it look like only she could've done it. She then placed Agent Hicks' body inside one of the spare tacky suitcases Ms. Teneiro designed and went into the elevator with it. The plan was to swap the suitcase containing the body with the one Ms. Teneiro buys on all her flights in the attendants' room, but the plane hit some turbulence. This caused the suitcase to open, sending Agent Hicks and his belongings flying onto the elevator's floor.\\

With no time to place the body back into the suitcase, Cammy had to adjust her plan. Upon seeing the unconscious Miles Edgeworth in the lounge, she realizes she found another fall guy. She emptied the suitcase and placed it in the gift shop, then took a piggy bank and smeared blood on it to make it look like the murder weapon. She then planted it in the elevator and Agent Hicks' travel wallet onto Edgeworth to frame him and make it look like the elevator was the true scene of the crime. She then snuck back to her flight duties just in time for Edgeworth and Rhoda to discover the body.\\

But she didn't count on two things: that her fall guy was actually a genius prosecutor and some of the Borginian cloth she used was still in that suitcase. Those two facts would be instrumental in the truth being exposed.

With the dead body now on hand, Cammy knew she had to frame someone else as the body would easily be discovered, and settled on Rhoda Teneiro. But first, she had to ensure no one would realize the cargo hold was the real scene of the crime. She used Borginian Cloth to clean up the blood as it would be unloaded in Zheng Fa so no one realized, and once the plane made the stop there, a rather obvious fake Alif Red Statue was loaded onto where Agent Hicks landed, removing any further suspicion.\\

Franziska continued to insist that the souvenir bank, together with Ms. Teneiro's access to the keycard, made her the most likely suspect. Edgeworth, however, saw a more likely murder weapon -- the cargo hold itself. Hicks could have fallen to his death from the upper landing. The autopsy report supported this hypothesis -- but Franziska pointed to a large box under the landing that would prevent a lethal fall. Edgeworth reminded her that they had stopped to take additional cargo between 4:00 and 5:00am, meaning the box might not have been there. The large box, naturally, belonged to Lablanc, who furiously insisted it was originally from Europe (not loaded at Zheng Fa). But the enormous statue it contained was an obvious forgery -- proven by Hicks' photograph of the red-eyed original. It also stood ''over'' the drop cloth of a piece of cargo which was loaded at Zheng Fa. This justified Hicks' presence in the cargo hold: to take photos of the hold before and after the stopover.

Attention then turned to the missing cell phone. Franziska was able to locate it by the simple trick of calling it. It had been stashed in Ms. Teneiro's locker. Edgeworth surmised that it had been hidden because it contained evidence, like a photo, and Franziska was able to recover the data since the phone was not too badly damaged. It showed the cargo hold before the stop at Zheng Fa, and the last, damning piece of evidence: boxes of cloth labeled in Borginian. Edgeworth easily perceived how this put the final nail in Ms. Meele's coffin -- anyone needing to wipe up a bloodstain in a hurry would reach for any cloth they could find, and only someone who could read Borginian would open the crate of Borginian cloth instead of another crate which was clearly marked "Bedsheets."

Kay and Little Thief intervened a second time. If the investigators couldn't enter the Haunted House itself, they could recreate it using the data on hand. Gumshoe supplied a set of blueprints from the case materials, and they mapped out a rough image based on what Edgeworth could remember just before he was struck. He recalled seeing a collapsed Badger at the far end of the hall, and he knew he had been hit from behind. Lance Amano declared that only Oliver had entered the Haunted House, so Edgeworth's assailant must have been him. But all the evidence pointed to an attack with the prop sword, held in the attacker's right hand -- which couldn't be Oliver since he was the Bad Badger and had the prop gun attached to his right hand. Lance admitted that he'd done the deed, which put both men inside the Haunted House.

Lang spoke up with some unwelcome news: one of the attractions of the Haunted House was a "disappearing Badger" -- which is to say, a Blue Badger doll at the end of the hallway. All of Edgeworth and Kay's speculations had been based on the premise that the Badger he had seen was a disguised kidnapper, but if it were just a prop, they'd have to rethink everything.

Kay updated the image to show the Blue Badger doll, but now the assailant somehow turned into the Proto Badger while stalking Edgeworth. Further, the "disappearing Badger" looked like a reversed Blue Badger, as if it were a mirror image. This led Edgeworth to suspect that it was just an illusion. There must have been a secret room in the Haunted House, concealed by a mirror wall: when the wall is "open" it reflects the hidden Badger, but when closed, the Badger disappears. Lance and Oliver Deacon must have hid behind that wall. When Edgeworth entered the dining room to leave the money, he heard the crash of the mirror wall breaking, though he had dismissed it as part of the ambient noises. When he emerged and saw a slumped Badger in the same spot, it was no longer the reflected illusion but Oliver Deacon's body! Lance then hid himself in the alcove where the actual doll sat, waited for Edgeworth to turn around, then ambushed him.

Shortly afterward, Shih-na took command of the third floor of the Babahl side of the embassy, where Coachen's office and the Babahlese Primidux Statue were kept. To facilitate the smuggling of Coachen's body back to his office where it could be discovered, she set fires on the fourth and fifth floors, activating the fire control systems and preoccupying everyone else. After taking care to be seen helping fight the fires, she descended to the courtyard and jumped into a concealed cistern which was draining as water was pulled to suppress the flames. Meanwhile, in Allebahst, Alba pushed the cart into the cistern in the rose garden. When both reservoirs were nearly empty, the pipe connecting the two opened, allowing her to retrieve the body; Alba then opened the taps again to raise the water and let her escape. She then used the elevators to take the body upstairs, dumped it in the office, and altered the murder weapon to make it look like it had come from Babahl.

Von Karma quizzed Edgeworth on the facts of the case. A couple days prior, a worker at the Codohpian embassy was shot and killed. Mack Rell was taken into custody and found to have the murder weapon on him; moreover, he had been seen doing the deed on the security camera. The wrinkle in the case was that the Yatagarasu had infiltrated the embassy: Rell had originally claimed to be the Yatagarasu himself before accusing the prosecutor. Because of similarities to another incident three years prior, the murder was coming to be known as the "second KG-8 incident." KG-8, incidentally, was when the Amano Group was caught in a smuggling scandal (and Colin Devorae was set up to take the fall); a Codohpian staff member named Manny Coachen was accused of killing the whistleblower, Cece Yew, before she could testify. Byrne Faraday failed to get him convicted. What connected that case to the present one was that the victim, Deid Mann, had also been shot before he could reveal what he knew; the main difference was the presence of the Yatagarasu, who had stolen a single item and sent it to the police on the same day. It seemed obvious to von Karma that the Yatagarasu could have been involved in the murder.

Back at Gatewater Land amusement park, Gumshoe and Edgeworth made their formal reacquaintance with Kay, who was pleased they still remembered her. But Edgeworth couldn't understand why she had sought him out, nor why she would take the title of Yatagarasu when it belonged to Calisto Yew, her father's murderer. Kay responded that her father was the ''true'' Yatagarasu, according to his own diary and his greatest weapon, Little Thief. Yew was just a pretender to the name. The "Yatagarasu" was active again, sending a calling card ahead to the former Codohpian Embassy, and Kay had hunted down Edgeworth so that he could find out the truth and bring Calisto Yew to justice at last. He protested that he wouldn't get involved in anything criminal, but he did feel indebted to Kay and agreed to do what he could to bring it all to a close.

He examines the body and finds Coachen dead of a stab wound: a knife is on the ground next to him. The handle has Babahl's butterfly symbol, but it looks too clean. It seems that it is one of a set of ceremonial knives jointly owned by the two countries, with interchangeable handles for Allebahst and Babahl. The Yatagarasu's Key, in key mode, is in his pocket -- which raises a host of questions. Wasn't it originally taken from Codohpia by the Yatagarasu? And wasn't it stolen shortly afterward by Calisto Yew, the false Yatagarasu? How then did it end up on the Babahlese secretary's body seven years later? Franziska nudges Edgeworth to ask Ambassador Palaeno what he knows.

Palaeno is happy to answer all of his questions. Coachen was his secretary -- such a competent one, in fact, that Palaeno left most of the daily governance to him. He even ran his own printing press, putting out the enormous amount of tourism-related paperwork that Babahl needs to make its income. Palaeno speculates that the key must have belonged to Coachen since his Codohpian days because it has both a flower and a butterfly design, but he doesn't know much about the details of its theft since he wasn't ambassador at the time.

Edgeworth tries the Yatagarasu's Key in Coachen's safe. It opens easily enough, but the inner space seems unusually shallow. He spies a hexagonal opening on the inner wall which reminds him of the cross section of the knife blade; sure enough, the 'knife' is a second key, allowing them to open the safe's second compartment. They find several pieces of rare, stolen art and an incomplete document. Franziska seemed to be hoping to find more, so he asks her why Interpol is interested in this situation. It transpires that she has visited, along with Agent Lang and Shih-na, to seek out more information about the smuggling ring; the clue that tipped them off was page 2 of an accounting document, printed on paper made only in Codohpia. Naturally, pages 1 and 3 are in the secret safe, confirming Franziska's suspicion that Coachen was the point man for smuggling Babahlese ink: a rare commodity of high value.

Everyone returns to the Theatrum Neutralis lobby, where Edgeworth uses the videotape to demonstrate, first, Coachen's presence in Cece Yew's apartment building, and secondly, his presence in the back of the Codohpian government vehicle driving away. He adds that it will be only too easy to confirm that the blood on the card was Yew's and that the vehicle was licensed to Alba, making it certain that Alba was also involved. But if he hopes the ambassador will surrender quietly, those hopes are in vain.

Alba decides to show his true face. He straightens up and goes in an instant from a doddering old man to a frightening general. The vehicle registration records will be long gone since Codohpia no longer exists, he claims, so there is nothing to connect him to the car. Edgeworth persists: it is possible to see a medal reflected in the car window -- a Codohpian medal of valor which just happens to match the one prominently affixed to Alba's chest. Even though Alba undoubtedly destroyed the vehicle registration records to eliminate the evidence, there is still a way to demonstrate his presence at the crime scene!

At least ten years ago, decorated war veteran Quercus Alba became an ambassador for the nation of Codohpia and took up residence in an embassy in California. There, unbeknownst to most, he established an extensive smuggling ring trafficking in, among other things, art and rare artifacts. The small nation of Zheng Fa became one of their transfer points, and to facilitate matters Alba began circulating counterfeit bills. The fake currency, made with Codohpian paper and ink, was almost indistinguishable from real money, and the country's economy began to suffer. This inspired a young man named Shi-Long Lang, a descendant of the famous Lang Zi, to devote himself to a career in international law enforcement in order to bring the ring down.

Things came to a head when a second whistleblower tried to break the silence three years later. His name was Deid Mann, and he worked for the Codohpian embassy. Yew hired Mack Rell to murder him, but the very day of the murder Byrne Faraday broke into the embassy, stole a special key belonging to Coachen, and sent it directly to the police. For the trial of this "second KG-8 incident," Faraday was again the prosecutor, with Yew posing as the defense, but Rell (on Yew's orders) muddied the waters by accusing Faraday of being the Yatagarasu. This forced a recess so that a new prosecutor could be found; in the intervening time Yew murdered Faraday for his knowledge, Rell for being a witness, and arranged the crime scene so that it would look like they fought and killed each other.

For the cases of Ace Attorney Investigations 2, click [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/AceAttorneyInvestigationsMilesEdgeworth2 here]].

Once freed, the pair met Lang, his assistant Shih-na, and his army of 99 MenInBlack, who had taken control of the investigation. Lang was a tough customer with a wolf motif, the utter devotion of his men, and an endless store of proverbs from his famous ancestor Lang Zi. Edgeworth wondered why someone from Interpol would investigate a domestic kidnapping -- especially since this must be the agent Franziska mentioned who was investigating the smuggling ring -- but Lang had very little to tell a "filthy prosecutor" and refused to allow Edgeworth to join the investigation. Kay decided to usurp something as well: the 'assistant' role from Gumshoe!

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Placed in restraints, Edgeworth insisted that he was a prosecutor and needed to investigate the crime scene before any evidence could be contaminated or the real culprit could escape the plane. The attendant who detained him, Ms. Rhoda Teneiro, insisted she saw him with the murder weapon, dripping blood, and that the travel wallet in his possession must mean he killed the victim for his money, but Edgeworth easily dismissed both claims by showing the empty wallet, dripping nothing worse than grape juice from a spill at the lounge. Ms. Teneiro, convinced, released him and secured permission from the Captain for Edgeworth to look around, provided she accompanied him. One of the passengers, a Zinc Lablanc (a self-proclaimed art dealer from the country of Borginia), said he had seen the victim taking the elevator down to the lounge at 6:00am, just before the turbulence, leaving only a fifteen minute window for the murder. To his mind, this put the guilt clearly on Edgeworth, as nearly everyone else was accounted for at the time.

The first clue that all was it not as it seemed was the crime scene -- a set of footprints in the spilled grape juice led to the shop area, which was now closed off. Edgeworth concluded that at least one other person had been in the lounge. Ms. Teneiro also revealed the important tidbit that the elevator served the lounge, the passenger cabin, and the cargo hold, though the third required a special keycard. Searching the body revealed that the victim had broken glasses, a large wound on the back of his head (a heavy souvenir bank lying next to the body could have done the deed), was carrying a photo of himself with a large, red-eyed statue, and was missing the cell phone he usually wore on a lanyard around his neck. His passport, hidden in his travel wallet, revealed his name to be Akbey Hicks.

Lablanc interrupted Teneiro at that moment, furious that the in-flight movie was not starting on time. A few questions soon revealed that Mr. Lablanc's watch was set three hours ahead of the timezone used by the flight crew -- what he had taken for 6:00am was actually 3:00am, widening the murder window considerably. The other flight attendant, a perpetually-groggy and somewhat underdressed woman named Cammy Meele, spoke up and claimed to have answered a page from Mr. Hicks' call button at 5:00am, while they were stopped at Zheng Fa to refuel and take on more cargo. Unfortunately, Edgeworth himself came down to the lounge after the stopover and was there in the 5-6:15 window, meaning suspicion remained on him -- and on Ms. Teneiro, who admitted to coming downstairs to take care of some business in the shop and in the flight attendants' room just off the lounge, before the turbulence. She was reluctant to say exactly what she was doing, but she remembered that the heavy bank had still been in the shop when she left.

Ms. Meele interrupted with a bit more information that cast Ms. Teneiro in a bad light -- she hadn't actually asked permission from the Captain to let Edgeworth search the plane. Ms. Teneiro, caught in the lie, crept away, and Ms. Meele joined Edgeworth in searching the shop. The glass case that formerly held the bank was shattered, and a small hat that would match its head was still inside, but Edgeworth concluded the bank had broken out on its own during the turbulence. A pair of suitcases caught Edgeworth's eye (and not just for being expensive and garishly decorated) by being neatly lined up when one of them had no blocks on its wheels and should have moved during the turbulence. Opening it, he found a bloodstained cloth inside: fabric in a Borginian pattern matching the headcloth of Mr. Lablanc. He speculated that the killer used the suitcase to move Mr. Hicks' body and then returned it to the shop ''after'' the turbulence, meaning the murder could have happened anywhere on the plane.

Edgeworth figured they might as well look around the area immediately outside the Wild West Area (the building the kidnappers had used for their hideout). They found clear footprints in the mud, though the information wasn't much help without knowing the culprits' shoes. A costumed Blue Badger mascot was a possible witness -- it was Officer Meekins -- but he claimed he hadn't seen anything except a second Blue Badger. This roused Edgeworth's suspicions, since the park's "Badger Photo Rally" game rules said that only one of each Badger -- Blue, Pink, Proto, and Bad -- would be out at one time. He concluded that it was a disguised kidnapper, and that the other kidnappers were probably also in disguise. They returned to the footprints, looking for tracks that a Badger costume would leave, and found two trails: one headed for the stadium and another headed to a nearby garage. They opened the door to find parking spots for three Badgermobiles -- and a corpse. It was the lost butler, Oliver Deacon. He seemed to have died of a single bullet wound that entered near his stomach and exited his shoulder, but it appeared his body had been moved to the garage from somewhere else. He wore a silver horse pendant with "Colin Devorae" engraved in the back.

The sordid scene was further interrupted by the arrival of Lauren Paups, a distraught young Amano employee with an ill-concealed crush on Lance, and the return of Lang, who spotted the corpse and attempted to have Officer Meekins arrested on the spot. Riled, Edgeworth insisted that Meekins could not be detained without good reason; Lang counter-argued that only an officer would be likely to carry a gun, and that he had not personally inspected Meekins, meaning the logical interpretation was that Meekins ambushed and killed the man at the garage. Edgeworth responded that the body had bled very little, indicating that the murder took place elsewhere. However, he also found Meekins' behavior suspicious: pressing a bit, he learned that Meekins had been out in the Blue Badgermobile until he lost possession of it. The Badgermobile, which was currently back in the garage, could easily have been used to transport the body -- and Meekins didn't help his case by admitting that he had lost his gun. Despite Edgeworth's best efforts, Meekins was detained. Edgeworth and Kay were forced to leave the area.

Kay decided to step in with "Little Thief," a holographic projector that could recreate a scene based on the information she put in. Using Ema's tools for detecting footprints, Oldbag's testimony, and the circumstantial clues, they fine-tuned the image created by Little Thief until Edgeworth was satisfied: ultimately, the shooter and the victim were both disguised as Badgers, and the shooting took place when the victim stood on the stage that was formerly set up in the arena. He shared his conclusion with Agent Lang, who had arrived on the scene, and remarked that the probable interpretation was that one kidnapper had shot another. Lang continued to suspect that Meekins, in costume, had committed the crime and used his Badgermobile to move the body to the garage, but Edgeworth countered with the mud-free tires of the Blue Badgermobile, which would have been dirty if used as Lang hypothesized. And since the Pink Badgermobile was there in the stadium (with Oldbag), this left the Proto Badgermobile still at large.

Back in the Wild West Area, they met Mr. Amano and Lauren Paups. Lauren was still a fluttery bundle of nerves over Lance, whom she had known since childhood because she and her father were long-time employees in their house. Her father was frequently away on business trips for the Amano group, but ten years previously he had left for another flight on "Pegasus" and never returned. As for Mr. Amano, the only thing he had to contribute was a "love letter" for his son -- from a loan company. Kay immediately noticed that it sounded more like a collection threat than a promise of love everlasting. Now Lance had a motive to "disappear" himself, especially if he could collect a ransom in the process.

When they investigated the lair, all the signs pointed to ''three'' kidnappers. The locked door had been forced open, but it appeared to have been locked from the ''inside'' through the simple trick of a heavy prop sword wedged in the handle. Abruptly, a staff member in costume as the Proto Badger entered the staff area through the floor panel (startling Edgeworth and Kay) and exclaimed that both Bad Badger costumes were missing. The spare should have been inside -- but so should the regular costume, because the Bad Badger only appears for a brief scene once a day. A short investigation turned up one of the missing costumes in the trash. A chunk of cloth over its right paw -- where the Bad Badger's prop gun would be -- was torn loose. Edgeworth reflected that their investigation had turned up more questions than answers.

Kay updated the image to show the Blue Badger doll, but now the assailant somehow turned into the Proto Badger while stalking Edgeworth. Further, the "disappearing Badger" looked like a reversed Blue Badger, as if it were a mirror image. This led Edgeworth to suspect that it was just an illusion. There must have been a secret room in the Haunted House, concealed by a mirror wall: when the wall is "open" it reflects the hidden Badger, but when closed, the Badger disappears. Lance and Oliver Deacon must have hid behind that wall. When Edgeworth entered the dining room to leave the money, he heard a 'crash' which must have been the mirror breaking, though he had dismissed it as part of the ambient noises. When he emerged and saw a slumped Badger in the same spot, it was no longer the reflected illusion but Oliver Deacon's body! Lance then hid himself in the alcove where the actual doll sat, waited for Edgeworth to turn around, then ambushed him.

At the Theatrum Neutralis -- the theater and lobby shared by the two embassies -- Edgeworth and Kay take in the ''Steel Samurai'' stage show and walk out marveling at the amazing "Steel Samurai Sushi Slice" finishing move. As part of the night's entertainment, each country is sponsoring a stage production: Allebahst put on the Steel Samurai, and Babahl is producing the Jammin' Ninja. But the real draw of the evening's Goodwill Jubilee is the finale, in which the countries will reunite and form Codohpia once more. The only issue is who will rule the united country: Allebahst's Ambassador Alba or Babahl's Palaeno. The leaders have agreed to let the national treasure, the Primidux Statue, decide -- each ambassador holds one, but no one knows for certain which is real. The statues have been tested and the results will be announced that night, after which the holder of the real statue will take control of Codohpia.

The ring gathered many major financial backers into its fold. One was Ernest Amano, a wealthy associate of Manfred von Karma who fancied himself a philanthropist. However, the increased participants meant increased risk; a brave female employee of the Amano Group, Cece Yew, discovered the smuggling ring and threatened to expose it. Alba directed Manny Coachen, an embassy staff member, to silence Yew; Coachen was arrested and tried but acquitted because the surveillance video on which he appeared was stolen. The video fell into the hands of Ernest Amano, who planned to keep it as a bit of insurance. Amano also sacrificed his secretary, Colin Devorae, on the altar of silence; Devorae plead guilty to everything that had become known about the smuggling ring and was sent to prison. The KG-8 incident, as it became known, was a severe blow to detective Tyrell Badd and prosecutor Byrne Faraday, who had been tracking the smuggling ring themselves. Their only gain was the Directives Card which ordered Coachen to murder Yew, which Badd hid under a photograph among the KG-8 case files.

Alba had sent a female operative to pose as the defense attorney in Coachen's trial under the name "Calisto Yew." Her job was to gain the sympathies of Badd and Faraday; they were taken in by her show of distress when her 'sister's killer was acquitted and brought her in as a co-conspirator. Together, the three of them became the Great Thief Yatagarasu, a noble thief of information and dirty secrets. For the following three years, they infiltrated companies, stole damning information about them, and released it to the media along with their own card: the black three-legged raven on white paper, the reverse of Alba's own. Yet while Badd and Faraday imagined they were sending a message to the leader of the smuggling ring, Yew was quietly keeping him informed on everything they were doing.

Things came to a head when a second whistleblower tried to break the silence three years later. His name was Deid Mann, and he worked for the Codohpian embassy. Yew hired Mack Rell to murder him, but the very day of the murder Byrne Faraday broke into the embassy, stole a special key belonging to Coachen, sent it directly to the police. For this "second KG-8 incident," Faraday and Yew were again the prosecutor and defense in Rell's trial, but Rell (on Yew's orders) muddied the waters by accusing Faraday of being the Yatagarasu. This forced a recess so that a new prosecutor could be found; in the intervening time Yew murdered Faraday for his knowledge, Rell for being a witness, and arranged the crime scene so that it would look like they fought and killed each other.

Edgeworth picked up the trail of the investigation by sheerest coincidence seven years later, when he happened to share an international flight with Zinc Lablanc II, an art dealer, and Akbey Hicks, an undercover Interpol agent. Hicks was investigating a possible smuggling route wherein a piece of art purchased in Europe was stolen before it was loaded and was replaced at Zheng Fa by a forgery. He had in his possession a photograph of the original statue and was in the process of photographing the statue-less cargo hold before the stopover when he was observed by Cammy Meele, a minor member of the ring working as a flight attendant. In a moment of panic, she pushed him over a railing to his death. Meele's initial attempt to frame a fellow flight attendant went awry, so she did what she could to cast suspicion on Edgeworth. He was able to clear his name and identify Meele as the real culprit, but Franziska's appearance in the investigation tipped him off that something larger was going on.

Shi-Long Lang was investigating the case for Interpol, hoping Ernest Amano would do something incriminating so they could justify taking him in. Unbeknownst to him, Alba had again sent his female operative to pose as a member of Interpol and gain his trust, this time under the name Shih-na. Lang was bitterly distrustful of prosecutors, knowing that at least one in the Prosecutor's Office was a member of the ring, but Edgeworth again worked through the web of lies to uncover Lance's crime. He was aided by Kay, who used her father's "Little Thief" hologram projector. Ernest Amano finally showed his hand by openly obstructing the investigation, but the police took him into custody before Lang could question him, and the evidence was hustled off by local prosecutor Jacques Portsman and detective Buddy Faith.

That evening, Portsman received an order from Alba to find and retrieve the videotape taken from Amano and Coachen's directives card hidden in the KG-8 files. The files were currently held by Edgeworth (he had inherited them with the office), so Portsman tricked Maggey Byrde into opening the door for him. He rifled the files and attempted to open the evidence locker but found nothing. As he was putting the files away, Buddy Faith confronted him, so he shot and killed the detective and confiscated the evidence he was carrying from the Amano case. A few moments later, Detective Badd (who had swiped the master key) entered the office and rifled the files himself. Edgeworth himself returned to his office at this inopportune time and was shocked to discover the body; Badd held him at gunpoint to keep him from turning around and made his escape with one of the binders.

In the seven years that followed the second KG-8 incident, Codohpia had split into two countries called Allehbast and Babahl. Alba was now ambassador of Allehbast, while an affable man with no connection to the smuggling ring, Colias Palaeno, was ambassador of Babahl. They shared offices at the California embassy, which was symmetrical enough to give each country its own half, with a neutral theater between them. Coachen was Palaeno's secretary and Alba's second in the smuggling ring, and he convinced Palaeno to go to a tourism-based economy based on many flyers and coupons and bottles of souvenir ink. This would enable him to keep large amounts of ink and paper on hand, and to run his own printing press, largely in the service of the smuggling ring. Palaeno was unaware of his subordinate's activities, but Alba feared Coachen's ambitions and hatched a plot to get rid of him.

The "Yatagarasu" primed the pump by sending a card ahead to the joint embassy as a warning that he was coming to steal their darkest secrets. This prompted Kay Faraday to seek out Edgeworth, knowing this could be their chance to catch the person who last laid claim to the title: Calisto Yew. That evening there was to be a reunification ceremony, where the ambassador whose country held the genuine Primidux Statue would be named ambassador of the new Codohpia. Palaeno already knew that Babahl had the fake one, but Coachen had secretly hired [=DeMasque II=] to steal the one in Allehbast. Alba, in the meanwhile, knew that Interpol was close to uncovering the smuggling ring and that the upcoming renovations on the Babahlese side of the embassy would be a good opportunity for someone to 'discover' Coachen's crimes, particularly if he were killed by the vengeful "Yatagarasu."

That evening, Edgeworth and Kay went to the embassy. Lang, Shih-na, and Franziska were there with Interpol, as were detectives Badd and Gumshoe because of the Yatagarasu threat. Early in the evening, during the Steel Samurai stage show, Alba ambushed Coachen backstage and killed him with a knife, though Coachen managed to leave a minor wound on Alba before he died. He concealed the body in a pushcart that the Steel Samurai (actually Larry Butz in costume) was due to bring into Allebahst as part of a publicity event. Then he had his embassy staff clear the room, though not before a hungry Wendy Oldbag took possession of several boxes of Samurai Dogs which had been left behind.

Shortly afterward, Shih-na took command of the third floor of the Babahl side of the embassy, where Coachen's office and the Babahlese Primidux Statue were kept. To facilitate the smuggling of Coachen's body back to his office where it could be discovered, she set fires on the fourth and fifth floors, activating the fire control systems and preoccupying everyone else. After taking care to be seen helping fight the fires, she descended to the courtyard and jumped into a concealed cistern which was draining as water was pulled to suppress the flames. Meanwhile, in Allebahst, Alba pushed the cart into the cistern in the rose garden. When both reservoirs were nearly empty, the pipe connecting the two opened, allowing her to retrieve the body; Alba then opened the taps again to raise the water and let her escape. She then used the elevators to take the body upstairs, dumped it in the office, and altered the murder weapon to make it look like it had come from Babahl.

With the statues moved, Alba and Shih-na worked simultaneously to cause a panic. Shih-na set more fires on the third floor, while Alba turned on some spotlights he had carefully manipulated to cast a Yatagarasu shadow on the stage. Edgeworth and Kay emerged from the Jammin' Ninja stage show about this time, unaware of what had happened; Shih-na, disguised in a black coat, allowed herself to be seen near the open air stage to tempt Kay into giving chase. She ran into Coachen's office, locked the door, and set fire to a large amount of counterfeit bills; then she used a hidden door in the fireplace to move to the next room, where she discarded the coat. Ambassador Palaeno, thinking he had seen Coachen go into the office, ran after him and unlocked the door but could not get in due to the high flames across the doorway; Kay came by once the fire had died out and stumbled across the body. Shih-na came out of her hiding spot and arrested Kay, hoping to blame the murder on this self-styled Yatagarasu and seize Little Thief for her own.