Myriam Scuttlebutt

Myriam Scuttlebutt is a suspicious student at Themis Legal Academy who sneaks around collecting information while obscuring her features under a cardboard box. She's a senior in the judge course at the academy, as well as the only member of the newspaper club.

After Scuttlebutt testified as a witness on Woods's trial, she dons a new cardboard box, possibly due to Simon Blackquill carrying out a threat to burn her old one.

Picking up a "Scoop"
After Juniper Woods's script was chosen to be used in the mock trial, she was enraged. Using her status as the only member in the newspaper club, she started writing about slander and lies about how Juniper was, claiming she was a devil and evil. Later, she overheard Hugh O’Conner telling Woods that, if he won the mock trial, that he would confess something to her. Scuttlebutt mistakenly took this as a love confession, and wrote that the whoever won the mock trial, O'Conner or Newman would confess their love to her. Later, it was revealed that it was not love, but rather O'Conner would tell Juniper his true age.

Later, she was sneaking around the school, trying to follow Woods. As she went into one of the rooms, she thought she saw Woods putting on her stage costume, but, was later found out to be Newman, who was revealed to be a girl. She started to follow her, and eventually tripped and fell on her box, losing her target.

On the day of the murder, she was questioned by Athena Cykes and Apollo Justice. As she was talking about testifying, Justice felt his bracelet tighten, knowing that Scuttlebutt was lying about something. They found out that she was not testifying for Woods's sake, but rather for her own personal gain.

A Boxed-Up Witness
Scuttlebutt was called to be a witness in Constance Courte's murder. Though she did not witness the murder herself, she claimed that Woods, in her stage costume, led her to the body. However, it is revealed that she was lying, and that she tripped on her box, thus losing her target. She was broken when Cykes called her a "failure of a reporter" thus making her throw her box up in shock and reveal her true face.

Aftermath
When Cykes and Justice went to investigate the stage area once again, they found Scuttlebutt in a new box sitting on the stage in hiding. They tried talking to her, but decided against it and left her alone as they investigated the stage. After they finished, she left, and they followed her, and talked with her about the trial, and the lawyers learned that, the only reason she followed and kept tabs on Woods, O'Conner and Newman was because she wanted to be their friend.

After Woods is acquitted, Scuttlebutt is slowly integrated into the group, with Woods stating that Scuttlebutt needed to help them with ending The Dark age of the law.

Personality
Myriam is a secretive and inherintly suspicious person. She is also socially maladjusted and solitary. She runs the school newspaper entirely by herself, taking great pride in her articles, though most of them are nothing but gossip or slander. She takes Aristotle Means's teachings to heart and believes, as does he, that the end justifies the means. In her case, she uses any means to find gossip or material to write stories, including leaving tape recorders all over the school. Myriam also seems particularly vindictive towards people whom she feels have wronged her, as she replaced a folder containing a script to be used in the school's mock trial with one containing a spring-loaded box-cutter. She appears to bear a grudge against Juniper, Robin, and Hugh, but as Athena and Apollo discover, she really wants to be part of their group.

Name

 * Her full Japanese name means "rumor collecting" ("atsumeru" (集める) meaning "to collect" and "uwasa" (噂) meaning "rumor").


 * "Myriam" is a French given name that is the equivalent of "Miriam", an ancient Hebrew given name with an unclear meaning. Some meanings that have been suggested include "bitter", "rebellious", and "beloved". It may also come from the word "myriad", meaning "a very/indefinitely great number of things", as she may have a "myriad" of items hidden in her box.


 * Her English surname comes from the word "scuttlebutt", which is a slang term for rumor or gossip.

Development

 * Her PC wallpaper is a picture of her with Woods, O'Conner and Newman.