Akbey Hicks

Akbey Hicks was a Borginian Interpol agent who was killed during his investigation into an international smuggling ring.

Investigation
An associate and close friend of Shi-Long Lang, Hicks was put on the Interpol investigation into the smuggling ring. For this, Hicks was paired up with the prosecutor Franziska von Karma and so he took iFly Airlines Flight I-390 from Borginia to the United States to meet up with her.

Death
During the flight, Hicks went down to the cargo hold with a flight attendant called Cammy Meele to check on the Alif Red Statue, a priceless artifact being transported on his flight that he suspected was swapped with a fake during a transit in Zheng Fa. Unbeknownst to him, Meele was working undercover for the smuggling ring. When Hicks began taking pictures of the cargo hold, she panicked and pushed him off the stairs, killing him. To cover the murder, she attempted to frame her colleague Rhoda Teneiro, by using one of the suitcases in the cargo hold to transport the body into the elevator and placing the victim's cellphone in Teneiro's locker. Whilst in the elevator however, a high turbulence occured, making the suitcase to burst open and Hicks' corpse to fall out and scatter his belongings in the elevator. Meele then decided to make the elevator as if it were the real crime scene. She left the corpse, cleaned the suitcase with a Borginian cloth, placed it in the gift shop and used a piggy bank from the gift shop cabinet to fabricate it as Hicks' murder weapon by covering it with his blood. She then placed the victim's travel wallet which was smeared with grape juice on the unconscious Miles Edgeworth, who fainted from the turbulence in the lounge.

Even though she managed to clean up the crime scene, as she had little knowledge of electronics, Meele failed to erase the photos on Hicks's phone, and eventually was caught and arrested for the murder.

Personality
From what little is known about him, Hicks seemed to have been an Interpol agent devoted to his job. According to Zinc Lablanc, he had a tendency to play with his phone.

Name

 * "Akbey" may come from the Japanese word for "yawn" ("akubi").


 * "Hicks" may come from "hiccup".

Development

 * Hicks was one of the first characters to be unveiled. However, little was revealed about him before the release of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.


 * The in-game image of Hicks's corpse bears a closer resemblance to his original art than the finished design, as the length of his hair becomes shorter, like in his concept art.


 * Before learning his name and the fact he's Borginian, his blond hair and glasses caused some fans to assume he was related to the Gavins when images of him were first unveiled.


 * The circumstances behind Hicks's death are very similar to those of Romein LeTouse in Turnabout Serenade. Both are Interpol agents whose identities as such investigators didn't discover for a while after the discoveries of their bodies.