Ship: Susato Mikotoba/Haori Murasame
Notes: warning for misogyny
Edit: accidental double post deleted! whoops
“Ryutaro Naruhodo, was it?” Iris’s biology teacher smiles at her from over his champagne glass. “Wonderful to meet you. Your daughter is an absolute genius.”
Susato (“Ryutaro”) affects her best polite smile. “Surely you exaggerate,” she says, scanning him for any hint of listening devices on his person or the telltale hidden insignia of the National Progress Party.
Her mind supplies her with the facts: John H Wilson. Never married, no children. Worked in the bioweapons department during wartime; became a professor one year after tentative ceasefire. Rumors circulating about potential retirement.
Bioweapons. A small voice in her head wonders if the pleasant man before her has killed people she knows.
“Not at all, Mr Naruhodo, not at all!” He clasps his hands together. “She’s miles ahead of all her classmates. In fact, I was hoping to catch you today.”
“Oh?”
There it is, she notes: the jagged cross stitched into the inner collar of his jacket. So he supports Stronghart, though is somewhat discreet about it. Good information to have, she thinks; the National Progress Party is notoriously secret about its member list. WISE should be pleased.
“I should really be leaving this to the superintendent, but—” Another smile. “Iris is so brilliant, it seems a waste to keep her in the first grade sometimes.”
Susato absolutely cannot let that happen. Barok van Zieks only teaches college and first grade elementary, on account of a lack of supply of teachers, and he is by far her best chance of contact with the NPP before the almighty Parent-Teacher Conferences. “I’m flattered,” she says, widening her eyes. “Haori and I couldn’t be more proud of her, truly. But Iris needs a stable environment right now, and we wouldn’t want to part her from her friends.”
Wilson, thankfully, is polite enough to not point out that Iris doesn’t have any friends her age. Or maybe he just hasn’t noticed. “A stable environment?” he asks instead.
Susato is still 0.5 femtoseconds into calculating whether to go with My Ex-Wife Died And We Are Very Sad or I Am A Licensed Psychologist, when she hears a scream.
She turns.
A group of people are clustered around the chandelier to the left of the hall, looking up at the ceiling in dead silence.
Susato squints. Is that—?
“Haori!” She calls, and with an apologetic grimace at John H Wilson and an expert twist of the hand that refills his champagne glass, she dashes off.
(Wilson blinks. Had Mr Naruhodo just had that entire five-star champagne bottle in his coat pocket the whole time? How?
Well, it’s some damn good champagne, so he won’t complain. What a nice man, that Ryutaro Naruhodo.)
It is Haori; Susato would recognize that white ribbon anywhere by now. Her hands are cupped around her mouth. “I’m so sorry, sir!” she is shouting at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to throw you that hard!”
Susato, having finally arrived, looks up.
Ah. What she had mistaken for a chandelier is actually a regular ceiling lamp with a man draped over it.
God, Haori is amazing.
“You bitch!” The man is screaming faintly. “You fucking — freak of nature, you —”
“If you speak to my wife like that again,” Susato says coldly, “I will personally see that the Board of Gottsreich Industries reconsiders your tentative reemployment, Mr Peroman.”
(Corey Peroman; worked in the explosives industry; two daughters who he sees once every three months; recently suspended for accusations of inappropriate behavior with coworkers—)
Peroman’s eyes had previously lit up upon seeing Susato’s approach. Hoping for a sympathizer, probably. Unfortunately for him, Susato is aware (objectively in her capacity as master spy Twilight) that Haori is probably one of the best people in the entire world.
“She threw me into the ceiling!” Peroman’s voice echoes faintly from the rafters.
Susato ignores him and turns to Haori. She almost switches to Japanese, but remembers their audience: “Are you alright?”
“What?” Haori blinks. “Oh! Yes, of course! But Ryutaro, that was…” She leans forward, brown eyes sparkling: “So dashing of you!”
Susato swallows. She’s doing it for the act. For the act. For the act.
Even so, she can’t help but admit: “Ah, it wasn’t… on purpose, honestly, I just — slipped.”
It’s happened more often on Operation Strix than the last five missions she’s been on combined. Susato should probably be concerned about that.
“Still!” Haori takes her hand, beaming at her. “You’re such a gentleman, Ryutaro.”
She taps twice on the back of Susato’s hand: their signal for Is this alright?
Susato taps back. Yes.
“What a sweet couple!” Someone coos in the background.
Susato, in a moment of brief madness, wonders if Haori would be alright if Susato — no, Ryutaro — kissed her, sweet and chaste and lingering. Wonders what the lipstick she’s wearing tonight tastes like. Wonders if she would kiss her back.
Wonders if Haori would consider it real.
The crowd around them, she knows, would see nothing out of the ordinary. A gallant man coming to a dainty woman’s rescue. They don’t know how hard Haori can punch; they don’t know Susato exists. It is simultaneously thrilling and sickening.
This is for the act.
“Ryutaro? Are you alright?”
Oh. Susato’s been staring. She clears her throat, looks away from the lock of Haori’s hair that curls against her clavicle. “Yes, of course,” she says. “What… happened?”
Someone from the crowd clears their throat. (Susato recognizes her: Olive Green-Ross, art teacher for the secondary-school department, in her fifties, married without children—) “I believe I can answer that,” she says, shuffling to the front awkwardly. “Mr Peroman was making… absolutely despicable comments about—” She looks down. “Me. And some others here.”
“He’s a disgusting bigoted harassing piece of—!”Haori winces at herself, then leans in to Susato. “He was saying horrible things about Mrs Green-Ross,” she says, lower. “And speculating about why she doesn’t have children.”
Ah.
“Thank you for throwing him,” Susato whispers back.
Haori grins at her. “It was mostly instinct, really. But anytime!”
Susato successfully shoves down the urge to kiss her again.
“I was serious earlier,” she says instead, turning to Green-Ross again, “about having a conversation with his employer.”
Green-Ross blinks, almost-hopeful. “You really could do that?”
“My friend reported him once,” someone else in the crowd pipes up. “Didn’t really do anything.”
“I can’t promise anything,” Susato acknowledges. “But I do have some — leverage, you could say.”
She truly, utterly despises that people are more willing to listen to her when she wears Ryutaro’s clothes and voice. She hates that one of her forms is privileged over the other. But Susato has to be practical here.
…And she doesn’t actually have any particular connections to the firm in question, but if a conversation doesn’t do the trick — a little wire fraud can’t be hard to expose. Especially not for someone whose fortune is as dubious as Peroman’s.
“I won’t mention any of you by name, of course,” Susato adds.
“Actually,” Green-Ross says. “I’d like if you did.” She smiles at her at last; it’s sharp. “Tell them Olive Green-Ross sent you, will you?”
Susato makes a mental note to not get on the art department’s bad side.
“I can do that,” she says, and smiles back.
“IS ANYONE GETTING ME DOWN FROM THE CEILING,” Peroman yells.
“You know,” Haori says conversationally, “I told him I was sorry, but I don’t feel all that sorry anymore.”
“He’s much more talented as a chandelier,” Susato agrees.
Haori laughs, brighter than sunshine. Then, in Japanese: “Ryutaro-san?”
“Yes?”
“I think someone’s coming over.”
Susato stiffens. Haori’s right — there are three suits looking at them from the other side of the room. Or rather, at the reflection of them in the wall-to-wall mirrors; clever.
“Observant as always,” she whispers.
“You know me!” Haori laughs nervously. “I just, um, took a lot of self-defense classes!”
Susato can deal with them — or investigate, anyway. But not as Ryutaro Naruhodo.
“How do you feel about a French exit, Haori-sama?”
Haori bites her lip. “But the ethnicity on my passport…”
“As in leaving without saying goodbye,” Susato clarifies quickly.
“Oh! I knew that! Alright,” and Haori flashes a grin. Her eyes glint. “Let’s get out of here.”
a/n: Corey Peroman is the best Ace Attorney name I’ve ever created I think
FILL: TEAM ACE ATTORNEY
JOKE’S ON YOU I HAVE THIS AU ALREADY
Ship: Susato Mikotoba/Haori Murasame
Notes: warning for misogyny
Edit: accidental double post deleted! whoops
“Ryutaro Naruhodo, was it?” Iris’s biology teacher smiles at her from over his champagne glass. “Wonderful to meet you. Your daughter is an absolute genius.”
Susato (“Ryutaro”) affects her best polite smile. “Surely you exaggerate,” she says, scanning him for any hint of listening devices on his person or the telltale hidden insignia of the National Progress Party.
Her mind supplies her with the facts: John H Wilson. Never married, no children. Worked in the bioweapons department during wartime; became a professor one year after tentative ceasefire. Rumors circulating about potential retirement.
Bioweapons. A small voice in her head wonders if the pleasant man before her has killed people she knows.
“Not at all, Mr Naruhodo, not at all!” He clasps his hands together. “She’s miles ahead of all her classmates. In fact, I was hoping to catch you today.”
“Oh?”
There it is, she notes: the jagged cross stitched into the inner collar of his jacket. So he supports Stronghart, though is somewhat discreet about it. Good information to have, she thinks; the National Progress Party is notoriously secret about its member list. WISE should be pleased.
“I should really be leaving this to the superintendent, but—” Another smile. “Iris is so brilliant, it seems a waste to keep her in the first grade sometimes.”
Susato absolutely cannot let that happen. Barok van Zieks only teaches college and first grade elementary, on account of a lack of supply of teachers, and he is by far her best chance of contact with the NPP before the almighty Parent-Teacher Conferences. “I’m flattered,” she says, widening her eyes. “Haori and I couldn’t be more proud of her, truly. But Iris needs a stable environment right now, and we wouldn’t want to part her from her friends.”
Wilson, thankfully, is polite enough to not point out that Iris doesn’t have any friends her age. Or maybe he just hasn’t noticed. “A stable environment?” he asks instead.
Susato is still 0.5 femtoseconds into calculating whether to go with My Ex-Wife Died And We Are Very Sad or I Am A Licensed Psychologist, when she hears a scream.
She turns.
A group of people are clustered around the chandelier to the left of the hall, looking up at the ceiling in dead silence.
Susato squints. Is that—?
“Haori!” She calls, and with an apologetic grimace at John H Wilson and an expert twist of the hand that refills his champagne glass, she dashes off.
(Wilson blinks. Had Mr Naruhodo just had that entire five-star champagne bottle in his coat pocket the whole time? How?
Well, it’s some damn good champagne, so he won’t complain. What a nice man, that Ryutaro Naruhodo.)
It is Haori; Susato would recognize that white ribbon anywhere by now. Her hands are cupped around her mouth. “I’m so sorry, sir!” she is shouting at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to throw you that hard!”
Susato, having finally arrived, looks up.
Ah. What she had mistaken for a chandelier is actually a regular ceiling lamp with a man draped over it.
God, Haori is amazing.
“You bitch!” The man is screaming faintly. “You fucking — freak of nature, you —”
“If you speak to my wife like that again,” Susato says coldly, “I will personally see that the Board of Gottsreich Industries reconsiders your tentative reemployment, Mr Peroman.”
(Corey Peroman; worked in the explosives industry; two daughters who he sees once every three months; recently suspended for accusations of inappropriate behavior with coworkers—)
Peroman’s eyes had previously lit up upon seeing Susato’s approach. Hoping for a sympathizer, probably. Unfortunately for him, Susato is aware (objectively in her capacity as master spy Twilight) that Haori is probably one of the best people in the entire world.
“She threw me into the ceiling!” Peroman’s voice echoes faintly from the rafters.
Susato ignores him and turns to Haori. She almost switches to Japanese, but remembers their audience: “Are you alright?”
“What?” Haori blinks. “Oh! Yes, of course! But Ryutaro, that was…” She leans forward, brown eyes sparkling: “So dashing of you!”
Susato swallows. She’s doing it for the act. For the act. For the act.
Even so, she can’t help but admit: “Ah, it wasn’t… on purpose, honestly, I just — slipped.”
It’s happened more often on Operation Strix than the last five missions she’s been on combined. Susato should probably be concerned about that.
“Still!” Haori takes her hand, beaming at her. “You’re such a gentleman, Ryutaro.”
She taps twice on the back of Susato’s hand: their signal for Is this alright?
Susato taps back. Yes.
“What a sweet couple!” Someone coos in the background.
Susato, in a moment of brief madness, wonders if Haori would be alright if Susato — no, Ryutaro — kissed her, sweet and chaste and lingering. Wonders what the lipstick she’s wearing tonight tastes like. Wonders if she would kiss her back.
Wonders if Haori would consider it real.
The crowd around them, she knows, would see nothing out of the ordinary. A gallant man coming to a dainty woman’s rescue. They don’t know how hard Haori can punch; they don’t know Susato exists. It is simultaneously thrilling and sickening.
This is for the act.
“Ryutaro? Are you alright?”
Oh. Susato’s been staring. She clears her throat, looks away from the lock of Haori’s hair that curls against her clavicle. “Yes, of course,” she says. “What… happened?”
Someone from the crowd clears their throat. (Susato recognizes her: Olive Green-Ross, art teacher for the secondary-school department, in her fifties, married without children—) “I believe I can answer that,” she says, shuffling to the front awkwardly. “Mr Peroman was making… absolutely despicable comments about—” She looks down. “Me. And some others here.”
“He’s a disgusting bigoted harassing piece of—!”Haori winces at herself, then leans in to Susato. “He was saying horrible things about Mrs Green-Ross,” she says, lower. “And speculating about why she doesn’t have children.”
Ah.
“Thank you for throwing him,” Susato whispers back.
Haori grins at her. “It was mostly instinct, really. But anytime!”
Susato successfully shoves down the urge to kiss her again.
“I was serious earlier,” she says instead, turning to Green-Ross again, “about having a conversation with his employer.”
Green-Ross blinks, almost-hopeful. “You really could do that?”
“My friend reported him once,” someone else in the crowd pipes up. “Didn’t really do anything.”
“I can’t promise anything,” Susato acknowledges. “But I do have some — leverage, you could say.”
She truly, utterly despises that people are more willing to listen to her when she wears Ryutaro’s clothes and voice. She hates that one of her forms is privileged over the other. But Susato has to be practical here.
…And she doesn’t actually have any particular connections to the firm in question, but if a conversation doesn’t do the trick — a little wire fraud can’t be hard to expose. Especially not for someone whose fortune is as dubious as Peroman’s.
“I won’t mention any of you by name, of course,” Susato adds.
“Actually,” Green-Ross says. “I’d like if you did.” She smiles at her at last; it’s sharp. “Tell them Olive Green-Ross sent you, will you?”
Susato makes a mental note to not get on the art department’s bad side.
“I can do that,” she says, and smiles back.
“IS ANYONE GETTING ME DOWN FROM THE CEILING,” Peroman yells.
“You know,” Haori says conversationally, “I told him I was sorry, but I don’t feel all that sorry anymore.”
“He’s much more talented as a chandelier,” Susato agrees.
Haori laughs, brighter than sunshine. Then, in Japanese: “Ryutaro-san?”
“Yes?”
“I think someone’s coming over.”
Susato stiffens. Haori’s right — there are three suits looking at them from the other side of the room. Or rather, at the reflection of them in the wall-to-wall mirrors; clever.
“Observant as always,” she whispers.
“You know me!” Haori laughs nervously. “I just, um, took a lot of self-defense classes!”
Susato can deal with them — or investigate, anyway. But not as Ryutaro Naruhodo.
“How do you feel about a French exit, Haori-sama?”
Haori bites her lip. “But the ethnicity on my passport…”
“As in leaving without saying goodbye,” Susato clarifies quickly.
“Oh! I knew that! Alright,” and Haori flashes a grin. Her eyes glint. “Let’s get out of here.”
a/n: Corey Peroman is the best Ace Attorney name I’ve ever created I think