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When Kay had learned that Franziska von Karma would be in LA at the same time that Ema Skye was on summer break, suggesting they all hang out together had seemed like the sort of whimsical, fun thing friends do, and she had said as such in the group chat. The summer sun, the ocean breeze - it had all seemed so innocent and easy.
But now, a month later and neck-deep in the thousand and one steps that lead up to a day on the beach, Kay is faced with the horrible reality that seeing her friends in their cute summer swimsuits means that she’d have to see her friends in their cute summer swimsuits.
"Stop twitching or you're going to pull a muscle," chides Ema when Kay looks up for the tenth time in two minutes. Ema leans back against the picnic table, one arm thrown over the table top. She tips her head back, towards the sun, and the beach wind tugs playfully at her hair like she’s the female romantic lead in a romcom. The other half of the table is dominated by a pair of moms in sundresses trying to squeeze their kid into shoes for the walk down to the beach, but every time they turn their back the kid peels them off and kicks them further down the boardwalk. "She'll be ready when she's ready."
"She's taking forever," Kay frets, except she doesn't fret so this is totally a neutral observation, said with a neutral inflection that involves her throat neutrally threatening to squeeze her vocal chords shut. This is a thing the human body can do, in a neutral way, and hers is doing it. "What do you think is taking so long?"
Ema shrugs. "You know how Franziska is. She's probably making sure her makeup is just-so."
Kay wasn't fretting before and she isn't starting now. Of course Franziska von Karma would wear makeup to the beach. What the fuck. She fiddles away on her phone and pretends her Wikipedia rabbit hole into the ecology of Los Angeles sand dunes is doing even a halfway decent job at convincing anybody how normal she’s feeling right now.
She sneaks a look down at her own outfit: a faded and stretched-out one-piece, once black and now a kind of blotchy gray; blue gym shorts inherited from her cousin, three sizes too big and cinched up tight with elastic cords that had seen better days; sandals that she's already practically worn to sand with how hard she keeps grinding the toe into the boardwalk. All of that pretending to cover up frizzy hair, unshaved and stubby legs, underdeveloped curves whose mere existence make her want to hide away forever.
When Kay became the Yatagarasu, she became everything it stood for, thief in the night and all. But being a Great Thief means blending in, and sometimes Kay can’t help but feel that she stands out like a sore thumb.
"Hey." Ema's soft voice wakes her up from her definitely-not-worry. Ema turns her face towards Kay, but that pushes the wind into her mouth, so she makes a face and pulls her shiny bouncing waves of hair into a ponytail through her cap (green with the words Stand Back, I'm About to do Science! embroidered on the front, which perfectly compliments the atom-patterning on her own tankini). She reaches into her bag and pulls out a bag of sunblock. "Don't forget to lather up."
"Right." Kay often forgets about sunblock. She knows it's important, but so is everything else. Considering she's just spent the past fifteen minutes pretending she doesn't have a body, it's not her fault if she forgets to rub icky goo all over it, right?
But with Ema staring her down she doesn't have an excuse, so she accepts the lotion and starts to rub it in. She tries not to make a face at the texture and she mostly succeeds.
"You missed a spot," Ema says, reaching over to swipe her thumb over Kay's nose.
They're close enough that Kay can count the freckles dusting her cheeks and smell her cucumber-citrus conditioner. Kay hopes her reddening face is because of the high UV index and nothing else. "Thanks?"
The sound of approaching footsteps causes Kay to twist around, and now she's really hoping those UV rays are doing their damage, because Oh, no.
Franziska von Karma is dressed to kill: hair pulled back into two neat braids, exposing the gentle curve of her neck; giant floppy sunhat like something out of a picture book, held down with one hand to protect it from the roving breeze; dark sunglasses that cover the majority of her face without pulling attention away from her glossy lips; slate gray long sleeve swim shirt tucked into a waterproof blue skirt that stops just above her knees. It's gorgeous.
It's also significantly more modest than Kay was expecting. For the briefest of moments, she wonders if Franziska is like her - body shy, embarrassed, or however many other words you can slice together to say the same thing: I don't think I'm supposed to look like this, but I don't know how else to look.
As quickly as it arrives, she dismisses the thought. Franziska doesn’t blend in, either, but in all the right ways. She's stunning. She belongs.
Franziska has silky hair and legs the exact right length and fingers that are slender with nails that are always perfectly manicured. She looks so, well, Franziska-y. Surely there’s no other way she could look.
Oh shit, people are talking. Kay dials back in:
"...ay Faraday?" Franziska is saying. "Are you ready to go?"
"Totally!" Kay flashes a thumbs up. She's having a super normal reaction to her friend wearing an outfit only marginally more revealing than her normal court attire. This is what a functioning person looks like, yup.
Franziska pulls her shades down her nose and squints. She's wearing eyeshadow that makes her crystalline eyes pop, and her eyebrows are angled sharp enough to cut. "Did you put on sunblock? You're bright red."
Pointing it out certainly doesn't help the situation. "Ema let me borrow some of hers."
Franziska tsks. “When it’s time to reapply, use mine. Those American brands are full of chemicals because your foolish FDA guidelines haven't been updated in decades."
“I'll be sure to let them know they need to get on that at our next lunch date,” says Kay, and only feels a normal amount of pride when Franziska's lip curls in quiet amusement.
"Don't worry," Ema assures them. "I brought this back from Europe. It’s the same brand you recommended last time."
"Hmm," says Franziska, like she's not sure how she feels about her friend taking skincare safely, and she starts down the boardwalk towards the beach. Ema throws her sunscreen back in her tote, but she grins as she jogs to catch up.
It’s late morning, and the sand underfoot chafes where it sneaks in between Kay’s toes. The beach is crowded with striped umbrellas and boldly patterned beach towels, but Franziska strongarms her way into the best spot, determined by some metric she hasn't deemed necessary to share with the rest of the class. She only has to threaten to whip their would-be neighbors once; by the time she brings up the statutes of littering in public areas within half a mile of sand dune nature preserves, they waste no time in skedaddling, trash and all.
“I’ll watch our stuff,” Franziska says, stretching out on her towel and pulling out her book. “You two have fun. Try not to drown.”
“I'll make sure to do it just so you can come rescue me,” Kay promises.
“There’s snacks and water in the cooler,” Ema tells her. “Don’t scare off anyone else.”
“I won't, unless they block my view,” says Franziska, which seems like a weird priority when her nose is already glued to her book, but Kay does have to admit that the line where the sky meets the ocean is quite beautiful.
And with that, Ema and Kay are unleashed upon the world.
Kay is a mediocre swimmer at best, but she's unparalleled when it comes to digging holes in the sand. Ema builds a sandcastle to fit inside her moat, and then the two of them misplace it after spending thirty minutes combing the beach for shells and seaweed for decoration. Around this time, Ema finds the squishy remains of a dead jellyfish washed up on shore, though Kay quickly loses interest after she pokes it with a stick and isn’t even a little electrocuted. When Ema starts arguing with experts on the iNaturalist app about the classification of her jelly, Kay decides this is her cue to exit stage right, leaving Ema to swear about Medusozoa and Scyphozoa to her heart’s content.
Franziska’s umbrella is solid black, which seems like an odd choice for a sun umbrella but at least it makes it easy to locate. Kay finds Franziska in the same position they’d left her, stretched out on her stomach and absorbed in her book.
As she sits down, she can’t help but admire her friend yet again. Franziska's shirt is fitted to show off her broad shoulders, and her pale skin and shimmery hair make her look not unlike an ethereal vampire. Without intending to, Kay finds herself measuring them up and finding herself falling short in every metric: her hair is frizzy instead of plaited, her legs are hairy and chubby instead of smooth and elegant, and even Franziska's palms are soft and lotioned while Kay chews at her fingernails until her cuticles bleed. Kay hugs her knees up against her chest and rests her cheek on them, watching Franziska with envy.
"I can feel you staring, you know," Franziska says, without taking her eyes off of the page.
Oh, fuck. Kay busies herself with flinging open the cooler and taking out the first thing her fingers grasp. "It's just so. You know." Kay pries open the tupperware and shoves her face with watermelon to avoid having to finish that thought.
"It's just so what, Kay Faraday?" presses Franziska, because once she smells weakness she pounces on it like a wolf on a rabbit.
Her toes dig into the sand. "I was just wondering why you're wearing all of that," she chokes out at last, watermelon juice dribbling down her chin. "When you could be wearing a bikini or something nice."
Franziska sighs. She bookmarks her place (she uses a real bookmark, with ornate illustrations of flowers and birds) and sets her book aside. She sits up, legs tucked to one side, and looks at Kay with all the patience of a mother trying to explain to her toddler that it isn't dinnertime yet. "This is nice," Franziska tells her. She says a name, as if it should mean something, but when Kay doesn't react she says, "It's a brand. A good one."
"Okay," says Kay.
"It's expensive."
"Okay."
Franziska fixes her with a Look (TM). "Do you not like it?"
Kay raises her eyebrows so high they almost shoot off of her head. "What?! Of course I like it! Anyone would like it!" Anyone would like anything Franziska wore. She could make anything look good.
Franziska's Look (TM) intensifies. "Ever since we arrived at the beach you have avoided looking at me, and whenever you do look, you have an expression as if I had asked you to suck on a lemon. The only thing that's changed between the ride to the beach and now is my outfit, so therefore there must be something you don't like about it."
"You've been spending too much time with Mr Edgeworth, if you're using Logic on your day off." Kay tries to channel his snooty investigative look, arms crossed and nose dismissively pointed towards the air.
Franziska wags her finger. "Don't try to distract me by bringing up my fool of a brother." She examines Kay so fiercely, leaning her whole body in close.
Kay’s face flushes, and she reaches to wipe away watermelon juices with the back of her hand and mostly succeeds in smearing it across her cheeks. "Um," she starts. "I guess it's just.... I didn't think you'd wear a shirt. It's not really what I expect to see from someone like you."
Behind the shades, Franziska raises her eyebrows. "From a prosecutor? Or a European?"
Despite herself, Kay giggles a bit hysterically. "From someone cool, I guess."
Franziska is quiet. She's still watching her, but it's transformed from a Look (TM) into something more questioning. Kay can't help but feel like Franziska is mentally peeling away each layer of her skin until she can peer into the nitty gritty of her heart. Kay braces for some scathing commentary, but in the end she raises her hand to dig the pads of her fingers into her shoulder. "I have a scar," she starts, turning away. "From a gunshot."
Ah. Kay remembers now. She'd snuck into Edgeworth's office one afternoon while he was out to lunch and helped herself to all of his most exciting case files. State v Engarde was supposed to have been Franziska's case, but he'd taken over after she was unexpectedly injured. She'd often wondered about that, but it turns out there isn't a subtle way to say “Hey, I was snooping through your brother's files when I learned that a trained assassin shot you. How's that going these days?”
Franziska plucks at her swim shirt with her fingers and pulls it out until it snaps back. "Sun protection is important," she adds, matter-of-fact. "Scars will damage from too much exposure. You are overdue to reapply, by the way. You're red all over."
Kay wasn't flushing before and she definitely isn't now. "I'm fine! Just.. you look so pretty in your shirt. I wish I could wear one, too."
"And? What's stopping you?"
The truth is that no matter what she wore she'd look frumpy and stupid. It didn't matter if it were oversized hand-me-downs or designer sportswear. She shrugs, helpless and angry all at once. "I don't know."
Franziska sighs, more fond than beleaguered. "Put on your shirt, Kay Faraday."
"But it's not a swim shirt!"
She snorts. "Is it going to magically repel the ocean away when you go swimming?" When Kay doesn't respond, she shakes her head. "I am surrounded by fools. Put on the shirt."
Accepting she had been out-Logiced, Kay pulls her shirt out of her backpack and tugs it over her head. As soon as she runs her hand over its worn pink cotton and the Jammin’ Ninja logo on the front, the tension in her shoulders ease.
Franziska nods to herself, and she has that self-satisfied expression she reserves for when the Judge bangs his gavel and declares the defendant Guilty. "As I thought. Now go cause chaos with Ema Skye and leave me to my book in peace."
She still looks just as gorgeous as before, but it doesn't fill Kay with that definitely-not-worry in the same way it had earlier. "You're sure you're okay holding down the fort?"
“I'm sure.”
"You'll defend the cooler even if the seagulls attack?"
"They won't."
"They'll try to steal our special European-grade sunscreen. It's up to you to defend it."
Franziska laughs and shakes her head. "Go enjoy the water, Kay Faraday."
Kay stands up and does a bang-up job of pretending her knees don’t wobble. “Thanks, Franziska.”
“I am only telling you what you are too foolish to see for yourself.” She waves a hand dismissively in Kay’s direction, nose already back in her book. “Go.”
Kay approaches the water hesitantly, afraid it might leap up and publicly shame her for daring to wear a shirt, but when neither it nor Ema comment on her new outfit she wiggles her toes into the wet sand with delight.
They spend the next few hours running up and down the beach looking for seaglass. Kay runs interference and throws their findings back into the water to show off her stone-and-glass skipping skills, but they all fall with a quiet ker-SPLOOSH! into the choppy waves.
Eventually Franziska joins them, and Kay forgets about the sunblock-stealing seagulls long enough for her and Ema to both drag Franziska under the water. She comes up spitting mad and seething, and when Kay finds herself locked under Franziska's arm and pushed under the oncoming waves, she is delighted to learn that cotton shirts get wet just the same as any swimsuit.
She's so distracted by the way her ribs ache (first from hacking up half a lung, then from laughter), that she forgets to be self-conscious about the way her shirt hangs off of her when it's weighed down with water.
After spending all day in the sun-kissed wind and waves, they topple back into the car in a sandy heap. On the way home they stop by an ice cream stand for dinner, and Kay feels warmed from the inside out, so bright she’s practically glowing. As she tells a joke and Franziska laughs, resting her hand on Kay's arm for support, the tingle of her skin suggests maybe it's more sunburn than internal glow. But if Franziska won’t tell, then neither will she.
For once in her life, with Franziska laughing and Ema beaming, Kay doesn't feel out of place at all. And every inch of her - frayed hair and unshaved legs and stubby fingers all - are irreplaceable parts of the Yatagarasu.