Application for The Siren's Pull
Player Information
Name: Hope
Age: 22
AIM SN: DISCO LAWYER
email: asyndeton@gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes! I have!
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? Word of...fingers?
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Canon Format: Game
Character's Name: Miles Edgeworth
Character's Age: 25
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. N/A
What form will your character's NV take? A cell phone. Which he will have a lot of trouble using. God, fuck technology. :(
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: None, save shouting.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Edgeworth is someone who, in his life, needs order and logic. So his ability would be creating structures - so long as he has adequate knowledge. He takes scattered, disorganized matter and makes it into something logical, comprehensible, and useful. In its weakest stages, the implications of this power are pretty straightforward: deconstructed things become reconstructed. He becomes able to rebuild brick walls, untear a piece of paper, assemble a mean jigsaw puzzle, just by exerting his will upon it - so long as he understands the original structure. So reassembling simple matter like that is phenomenally simple, because these are simple structures. He can do that easily. Later on, once he grows in power, he can even build these structures, making order from the disorderly earth. Unfortunately, doing this is not terribly useful, except in the most specific of circumstances; it saves on construction costs, but are you joking? Edgeworth? Constructing? Come on; he has a book to read over here.
With practice, refinement, and many hours of study, however, this power becomes more precise and more effective. Upon studying more than the most basic anatomy, for example, he'll be able to restore wounds. Upon studying chemistry, he can construct crystalline structures, turning gases into liquids and then into solids, even transforming certain elements into more ordered allotropes - for example, making graphite into diamond, potentially, if it didn't make him feel extremely guilty for creating wealth from nothing and disrupting the economy, which he would feel, because he overthinks like that. Upon studying electronics, he'll...do precisely nothing, because he is sort of a luddite and would never understand electronics and is goddamn proud of that fact, goddammit. Upon studying weaponry schematics...Um, yeah, he'd never study weaponry schematics.
So it's a skill of pretty great potential, yeah, particularly considering Edgeworth's keen mind; he's not scientific by nature, but he's honestly smart enough to understand just about anything that he puts his mind to, up to and including complex scientific concepts and powerful weaponry. However, it's one that would be hindered severely by his personality and personal beliefs, as well as by the fact that he would detest using a power at all. Even if his power did become active, he simply would not use it, because fuck that noise, he doesn't want a goddamn power, Jesus Christ, it's all just absurd mystical nonsense.
Weapons: None. Good God, none.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
The life of Miles Edgeworth can be divided into two epochs.
For the first nine years of Miles' life, there was no one but his father. Gregory Edgeworth was one of the premier defense attorneys in the United States and as remarkable a man as he was a jurist. He raised his son to respect the law, to trust human nature, to believe that justice must be done and will be done. Miles idolized the man. When other kids at school wanted to be astronauts, presidents, rock stars, Miles just wanted to be a defense attorney. Nothing else.
This dedication was what kept him largely friendless - and what earned him his first friends. Miles was smart, good-hearted, but he was always a little odd, too. The other students would go out to play, but he just wanted to stay inside to read and study because he knew you had to read and study a lot to be a lawyer. He wasn't bullied much, wasn't teased much, just was - in the fashion of smart, strange kids everywhere - apart from all of them, until the day when he stood up for the first time and acted out his dream.
It was a class trial. Someone had stolen Miles' lunch money. The accused was Phoenix Wright. There was no real evidence against Phoenix, but even so all the other kids and even the teacher decided he was guilty, telling him to apologize and return the money even as Phoenix broke down in tears. Miles, usually quiet and polite, couldn't stand for what he recognized as a miscarriage of justice, and consequently stood up and shouted that they should all be ashamed of themselves for acting in such a way. Another student, Larry Butz, joined in, agreeing that this sort of bullying was typical. The chagrined teacher allowed that the proceedings had not, indeed, been fair, and agreed that there was no evidence Phoenix was guilty. After this, Phoenix, Larry and Miles became completely inseparable - for just under a year.
That December was the DL-6 incident.
It was three days after Christmas. Miles went in with his father to court and watched that day's trial. His father had lost, but had scored a penalty against the prosecutor, something that had clearly upset the prosecutor deeply, to the point where he still looked upset even when the judge declared the defendant guilty. As they stepped on the elevator to leave, holding the door for the bailiff who was similarly heading home, Miles asked about the man, prosecutor von Karma. His father wasn't able to explain the man.
Then, at 2:04 PM, twenty seconds after the three of them had stepped into the elevator, Los Angeles was hit by the worst earthquake in recent memory. The courthouse lost power altogether, and the elevator froze between floors. Designed as it was for the transport of criminals, it was fortified and inescapable. Gregory Edgeworth knew this, and knew that the only thing that they could do was keep calm; Yanni Yogi, the bailiff, panicked from the start, trying to pry the doors open until finally Gregory urged him to stay calm. Yogi bristled, but sat.
They were trapped for five hours in the dark, the air growing progressively thinner. Yogi attempted to start arguments with Gregory more and more frequently, and Gregory's refusals to give in grew more and more curt. Gradually, Yogi started speculating on how long air would last for three people; as that hour wore on, his speculations turned to comparing how long it would last for two. Finally Gregory snapped at him, and Yogi snapped entirely, leaping on the man and attempting to choke the air out of him. All Miles could do was watch - until he saw something at his feet. He picked it up and threw it at them, realizing too late that it was a gun. It went off.
The next thing Miles remembered was waking up in a hospital, being treated for oxygen deprivation. His father had been shot. He was dead.
The trial of Yanni Yogi was an embarrassment to everyone involved. Originally, the State had wanted to assign Prosecutor von Karma to the trial, but von Karma was taking a vacation - the first, apparently, he'd ever taken. The prosecutor they assigned in his place was scarcely competent; Hammond, the attorney Yogi hired, was cutthroat. He labored at great length to prove that Yogi had been rendered brain-damaged and incompetent by the incident. When Miles took the stand to testify, Hammond similarly claimed that the boy's intellect had clearly suffered from the oxygen deprivation. The last day of the trial, the papers printed news that the police had consulted a psychic in their investigation. The day after the not-guilty verdict, Yogi's fiance killed herself.
And Miles had lost his father. He spent several months in Social Services, keeping to himself, quietly reading, talking to no one, before he was approached by Prosecutor von Karma.
This is the man who defines the second epoch in Edgeworth's life. Manfred von Karma was ruthless, harsh, arrogant, and demanded perfection from himself and from everyone around him. He came to Edgeworth and told him that his father's killer had gone free. He asked him if this left him bitter. When Edgeworth said yes, von Karma offered to teach him how to ensure that no criminal ever went free again. And so Miles, nine years old, bent on an ill-defined revenge against all criminals, and wondering if he himself, having thrown that gun, didn't number among them, followed von Karma to Germany, and there learned to prosecute.
He was nineteen when he returned to America to argue his first trial. He was different from the boy he'd been. He emulated his mentor in all things, from courtroom tactics to dress to his perfect record. He became the youngest man to successfully argue a case in Los Angeles. His youth, coupled with his spotless win record, his attitude in court, and his snobbish and condescending demeanor, led to rumors regarding his tactics. These rumors grew to the point where the local newspaper ran a story alleging the use of forged evidence in Edgeworth's trials, and though Edgeworth sued for libel and won, the damage had already been done: his childhood friend, Phoenix Wright, had heard the story.
Wright passed the bar when Edgeworth was 24. Edgeworth had heard from his childhood friend a few times - absurd letters begging him to say that he was honest, that he was good, that he was true to himself. He hadn't responded. Phoenix, evidently, had either developed a passion for the law or gotten more absurd still, and Edgeworth's efforts to avoid him were suddenly, irritatingly halted when he was assigned to prosecute a client Phoenix was defending. And, for the first time in his life, Edgeworth lost.
Two cases against Wright and two losses, and Edgeworth felt unmoored. Two cases, and two innocent defendants. He'd been taught of the fundamental guilt of every person on the earth, yet Edgeworth wondered, uncomfortably, absurdly, if maybe he'd been wrong - if maybe in all those trials, all those convictions, there had been another person, the true culprit. He wondered if he had overzealously sent innocent people to die.
He decided to never see Wright again.
Christmas Eve, fifteen years after his father's murder, four days before the statute of limitations on that crime ran out, Edgeworth received a letter from Robert Hammond, the defense attorney to come out to Gourd Lake. He hadn't spoken to the man in fifteen years, ever since he'd taken the stand to accuse Yanni Yogi, but Hammond wrote saying he knew who killed Edgeworth's father. But once there, Hammond hadn't said a thing: he'd just pulled out a gun and fired, two shots, and then he'd fallen into the water. Edgeworth had been arrested hours later.
This was the beginning of the trial that would end in the resolution of the murder of Gregory Edgeworth. Manfred von Karma had been in the courthouse that day, fifteen years before. He'd been maddened by the penalty he'd received, the one blemish upon his perfect record, and had sworn revenge. When Miles had thrown the gun, it had gone off; the bullet had hit von Karma, standing just outside the elevator, in the shoulder, just before the power had come back on. The doors had opened. Von Karma, furious and in agony, had picked up the gun and shot his rival Gregory Edgeworth through the heart, before leaving. The next year had been dedicated to cleaning up the mess surrounding the incident, repairing the damage to his shoulder, and finding young Miles to begin constructing his revenge against the boy. He set Edgeworth up to believe that he himself had killed his father and, as insurance, had used Yanni Yogi to frame Edgeworth for Hammond's murder - and all because Miles, in throwing the gun, had accidentally injured him.
It was Wright who defended Edgeworth in that case. Without his help, Edgeworth never would have found out the truth. Even so, he found it hard to thank his friend - found it hard to look him in the eye. Edgeworth's life had been divided into two epochs, that of his father and that of von Karma, and now...He felt lost. He didn't understand what purpose his life had served, why he'd done what he had. So he prosecuted one more trial, and then he'd left a lone note: "Prosecutor Edgeworth chooses death." Then, without a word to anyone, he'd fled.
He'd traveled for a year before he'd returned. In that time, by traveling and reading and thinking, he'd managed to find some measure of peace with himself. He came to understand what it meant to be a lawyer, to be a prosecutor, to the honest and straightforward and righteous in court. Where once his friend had helped him, he returned now to help Wright, assisting him in the hardest cases of his career.
Subsequent to that, he traveled further, broadening his knowledge of international law systems. It's from this point, where he's quite cheerfully - well, slightly less dourly - immersing himself in the knowledge of foreign countries, where I'm taking him.
Point in Canon: From after the conclusion of the second game.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: N/A
Character Personality:
Edgeworth is, at his heart, an exceedingly good person. He is almost painfully good. He has a deep, uncompromising core of virtue; all he wants, ultimately, is to ensure a peaceful life for the semi-mythical common citizen who lives with his or her spouse and several children and pays his or her taxes and has a dog and likes to do the crossword puzzle on the weekend and is happy. To this end, he dedicates himself to the fight against crime to a degree that is quite thoroughly unhealthy; he sacrifices himself, his free time, his relationships, his happiness, to make himself into a powerful crusader for justice, for an ordered society, and for the peaceful life of that common citizen. It's a dedication he's had all his life. It's what his father taught him. But, unfortunately, the zeal instilled in him by his early formative years was twisted and corrupted in the later ones: that desire to see the common man safe from criminals was redirected into a personal vendetta against all criminals; that determination and grit-jaw stubbornness became a cold ruthlessness and a willingness to employ nearly any method to ensure that the criminal in question ended up behind bars. What was good became used for evil.
Though he has lately come to be rather more at peace with himself, he still is always painfully aware of this betrayal of his base nature. The person he was shone so brightly and was so clear-eyed and powerful that, as much as he tries, he can't obliterate the youthful and naïve crusader at his heart, which leaves him uncomfortable; any inquiry or investigation that tries to delve beyond the surface level of Edgeworth's person causes him to retreat, to become defensive and harsh, both in an effort to hide that core of naivete from the world and in an effort to shield it.
Consequently, he comes across prickly, even nasty, in person. The persona he's constructed in court - that of a cold, ruthless, condescending snob who will do anything to ensure a victory - doesn't really help him. He has a reputation, therefore, as someone who is cruel, someone who is, quite frankly, bad, and Edgeworth is nothing if not powerfully sensitive to what others think of him; this very same reputation causes him to become harsher and more remote in self-defense. He has few professional relationships and no social ones save for with those few insensitive clods persistent enough to batter down Edgeworth's rigidly constructed defenses.
Even with those he considers friends, however, he isn't a nice person. He's fiercely loyal to them, yes, and would probably lay his life down for their sake. However, by virtue of being so close to him, they're subjected to the same intense scrutiny and criticism he gives himself. There are a few exceptions; certain people he places on a pedestal, in the manner that once he idolized his father and idolized his mentor, adoring and trusting them unconditionally, but those are limited to people such as teachers, lovers, and kids. (He has a total soft spot for kids.) His fellow soldiers in the war of the just versus the unjust, however, he treats utterly without mercy, subjects to the harshest criticism, does not spare a single kind word, because he considers it his job to help to make sure that they are absolutely at their sharpest so as to better fight for justice.
Total woobie, though. Jaysus.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: N/A
Character Plans: JUSTUSS. He'll seek a job in the law and subsequently do his best to ensure that people follow the laws. If possible he'll harangue the police into helping him. Meanwhile, he'll be all whiney at people about what's good and right and all that other b.s.
Appearance/PB: EXTREMELY DIGNIFIED AND HANDSOME.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
This is utterly absurd! This whole situation is entirely extrajudicial. Those here have been brought here entirely against their wills. I demand a strict accounting for the following: who, precisely, is responsible for this and how they account for what they have done.
Third Person Sample
Throughout the years, through six continents and dozens of seas, Edgeworth hadn't ever smelled a harbor quite like this one. Strange. He'd stood on the banks of the Ganges and watched the bodies, trailing white, slowly slipping beneath the surface of the water. He'd stood on the banks of the Thames and watched them pulling bodies out. He'd stood on the sun-baked shores of the Dead Sea, heavy with salt and ancient life, and on the icy shores of the Arctic Sea alongside St. Petersburg. He'd seen a hundred seaports or more. But none were quite like this.
It was something about the salt in the air. It was fetid, somehow, foul, as though tainted by some chemical. Yet it was no chemical scent he knew, nor any familiar smell of rot, nor any familiar death, nor any familiar grime; that taint was mysterious, an unknown quantity - something new and mysterious. He didn't know what to make of it.
In a way it smelled like the sea by Los Angeles. The ocean there had been sharp, clean, fresh - and this was not sharp, clean, or fresh, but it had that same nostalgic quality. This sea, like that sea, smelled likewise of the first breath of spring. It smelled of longing.
"It was raining," the officer was saying. "Of course there won't be gunpowder residue, you know, it got washed away in the rain. Not hard to understand. Seen it before, see it again."
For a scant moment Edgeworth wondered what it would be like if he didn't protest. A homicide turned neatly into a suicide. There would be some back at the office who would look at him and be ashamed, but most would nod appreciatively at the reduced workload. Perhaps he'd get a bonus, enough to have a fine meal, of the sort to which he'd always been accustomed, to have his clothes dry-cleaned...
For only a scant moment.
"If you persist in this utter idiocy I'll have your badge," Edgeworth said, turning away from the sea and towards the detective, his jaw set. "The residue would not wash away, and I would have thought that even an imbecile would understand that the burns would remain, as they have; evidently, I was incorrect, as it seems an imbecile missed it." He took a moment and grit his jaw harder. "Even if there were no burns, no one shoots himself at a downward angle. This was a murder, and by God, if you report it a suicide I'll ensure every man in the city capable of reading reads about your personal incompetence."
There was a moment when the detective just stared at him. Then his brow furrowed and, angrily, he wrote something on his notepad then all but threw it at Edgeworth.
"You want a fucking murder, congratulations," he snarled. "A fucking murder."
Edgeworth unworked his jaw. It was with a grim satisfaction that he noted the man's judgment of suicide on that piece of paper. By God, everything else might be different here, but he would not change. He would not.