Shih-na

"Calisto Yew"

- Did you know? Laughter is the best medicine, Edgeworth. Don't you get tired of making a serious face all the time?

Shih-na was an Interpol agent acting as a secretary for Shi-Long Lang. Shih-na was Lang's closest subordinate, usually following him in his investigations and fetching various documents for him, though occasionally she would take over part of an investigation if the area to be combed over warranted such an arrangement. In reality, "Shih-na" was merely a cover for an anonymous spy and skilled defense attorney working for the Cohdopian smuggling ring, who previously went by the alias "Calisto Yew".

A mysterious beginning

 * Main article: KG-8 Incident

Cece Yew, an employee of the Amano Group (a financier of the ring), threatened to testify about the smuggling ring's activities. However, Manny Coachen, a top agent of the ring, killed her, and he was arrested and sent to court. The spy then claimed to be Cece Yew's elder sister "Calisto" and watched as Coachen received a not guilty verdict thanks to the actions of an Amano Group employee. Prosecutor Byrne Faraday and detective Tyrell Badd saw "Calisto" give a great wail of despair as the verdict was read, and they decided that they would have to take the law into their own hands to take down people like Coachen. At first, "Calisto" blew off their attempts to talk to her, but when they began their vigilante thefts against the smuggling ring, she was ordered to join in their activities as a mole.

Thus, the three created the persona of the Great Thief Yatagarasu, who exposed the ring's links to various companies over the next three years. Each member had a "special skill" to contribute, Calisto's being the ability to find out where the target of each heist was thanks to her connections to the companies that came with her job. However, the mole ensured that the Yatagarasu would never actually find the ringleader.

Betrayal

 * Main article: Turnabout Reminiscence

Three years after Cece's murder, Byrne Faraday infiltrated the Cohdopian Embassy and stole a special key that opened a safe containing incriminating documents against Manny Coachen; it could also be converted into a knife. Since he had come so dangerously close to the leadership of the ring, Calisto was ordered to silence Faraday and retrieve the key. Additionally, an employee of the embassy, Deid Mann, was threatening to reveal the ring's secrets, just as Cece had done, and Calisto was told to silence him as well.

Calisto hired a hitman, Mack Rell, to kill Mann, but he was caught on camera and arrested for the murder. Calisto took on Rell's case, and she told Rell that she would give him an acquittal in exchange for accusing Faraday of being the Yatagarasu. However, during the ensuing recess, things went sour again when Faraday dragged Rell over to Defendant Lobby No. 2 of the District Court to interrogate him. Calisto entered the room pretending to be worried about the situation, and then she took the key and stabbed Faraday with its knife aspect, killing him instantly. She then had Rell assist in tampering with the crime scene, and she had Rell play the security video containing Mann's murder footage and turn the volume up to maximum. She then proceeded to shoot Rell with his gun and rearranged the crime scene to make it look like Rell and Faraday had killed each other. Meanwhile, Badd suspected that something bad was going to happen, so he summoned rookie detective Dick Gumshoe to guard the lobby. Calisto met them in the hallway and took Badd to Defendant Lobby No. 1 to have a talk. Twenty minutes later, she spilled her perfume intentionally, causing Badd to open the window of the lobby and hear the gunshot from the security video. Believing that a gunshot had occurred just then, Badd rushed to Lobby No. 2 to find the two bodies.

Rookie prosecutor Miles Edgeworth took over the investigation of the double murder, and his demeanour immediately came off as hilarious to Calisto. While he was questioning the people in the hallway, Manny Coachen arrived and took Calisto outside to speak with her. When she came back, she claimed that Coachen had taunted her using Cece's death, in order to hide their real conversation topic. She found that the deaths had been proven not to have been simultaneous. Calisto then argued with Edgeworth, attempting to accuse Gumshoe as the killer using the judge's testimony of watching Gumshoe's movements from a washroom window. However, Edgeworth argued that Gumshoe had no motive.

Later investigations brought Edgeworth into Courtroom No. 3, facing Calisto in another argument. He implicated Calisto as the real killer and revealed the truth behind her role at the courthouse. Calisto asked for the murder weapon, which had been dubbed the Yatagarasu's Key, to verify its transformation into a knife, which was a key point in Edgeworth's argument. As Edgeworth realized that Calisto was the Yatagarasu, she gave a long laugh and thanked him for giving her a thrill that even her heists couldn't give her. She admitted to everything, including her role as a member of the smuggling ring. She pulled a gun on Edgeworth and shot at him, although he was able to dodge it, before proceeding to escape from the courtroom.

A mole in Interpol

 * Main article: The Kidnapped Turnabout

The spy was next assigned to Interpol agent Shi-Long Lang, who was closing in on the ring's activities due to their detrimental effects on his home country of Zheng Fa. For this purpose, she took on the name "Shih-na". While she performed her assistant duties to Lang, she fed crucial intel to the smuggling ring.

Seven years after the murder of Deid Mann, Lang flew to Los Angeles to track down Ernest Amano, the CEO of the Amano Group, in Gatewater Land. There, Shih-na again saw Miles Edgeworth, who was investigating a kidnapping at the park, as well as Kay Faraday, Byrne's daughter, who had Byrne's "Little Thief" device. The kidnapping turned out to have been faked, and the "victim", Ernest's son Lance Amano, was found to have committed murder while staging the kidnapping. Ernest was arrested for his role in covering up Lance's act. Meanwhile, Shih-na devised a plan to steal Little Thief from Faraday.

Final task

 * Main article: Turnabout Ablaze

Quercus Alba, the ambassador of Allebahst, was the leader of the smuggling ring, and he noticed that Manny Coachen was trying to betray him, so he had Shih-na cooperate with him to make it look like the Yatagarasu had killed Coachen as the leader of the ring. To this end, Alba sent the Yatagarasu's calling card, and Lang's team was subsequently placed in the Allebahstian Embassy as Alba's bodyguard. Alba then killed Coachen, smuggled the body in a cart to the rose garden in the Allebahstian Embassy, and placed the cart in a pool in the garden. Meanwhile, Shih-na set the neighboring Babahlese Embassy on fire, so that the firefighting effort would drain a nearby pool, which was connected to the pool in the rose garden. Shih-na floated down to the bottom of the pool as it was being drained, and she collected the cart on the other side. Alba then refilled the pools to allow Shih-na to return to Babahl and plant Coachen's body in his office. Alba then went to his own office and fired two crossbow bolts attached to wires from his window into Coachen's office, With Shih-na's help, he used these wires to switch the two Primidux Statues, as the Babahlese one had counterfeiting plates hidden inside it. Shih-na proceeded to burn the counterfeit bills in Coachen's office, causing another fire in Babahl.

During the fire, Kay Faraday spotted the disguised Shih-na, who, seeing her chance to take Little Thief, escaped back into the office and then moved to an adjacent room through a secret passageway. Faraday gave chase, and then she spotted Coachen's body in the office, at which point Shih-na re-entered the office and apprehended her from behind, accusing her of the murder. However, Miles Edgeworth arrived on the scene and shot down Shih-na's accusation in another argument.

Later on, Edgeworth suspected Shih-na herself as Coachen's killer, as her movements prior to apprehending Faraday came into question. Edgeworth soon discovered that she was, in fact, "Calisto Yew", and his arguments placed her at the crime scene. Calisto/Shih-na laughed and thanked him for giving her a thrill to top even the one from seven years earlier. She then taunted Faraday into getting closer to her and she grabbed her as a hostage in an attempt to escape. Tyrell Badd suddenly appeared and moved to shoot her, but Lang intervened, freed Kay, grabbed Calisto/Shih-na and was inadvertently shot in the leg. He maintained that Shih-na was still his subordinate, and thus obligated to protect her from harm. As she was being taken away, Calisto/Shih-na dropped what appeared to be two hair sticks. Kay made to return them, but Calisto/Shih-na told her to keep them. Her parting words for Edgeworth were that she had killed no one that night. After she had gone, Badd told Edgeworth that "Calisto Yew" never existed, and that she had been a mole for both the Yatagarasu and Interpol the whole time. The hair sticks later turned out to be the crossbow bolts used in the exchange of the Primidux Statues and proved to be vital in Edgeworth's case against Alba.

Personality
As her job required her to change her personality and appearance, it is unclear what of Calisto/Shih-na was real and what was an act. During her career as an Interpol agent, Shih-na always acted alongside Lang, with a consistently calm and collected demeanour during investigations. In fact, she showed few outward signs of emotion at all and would rarely speak unless she was properly addressed. Lang and Shih-na seemed to have a strong bond of trust, although Shih-na was very likely only using Lang. As Calisto Yew, she was very self-conscious of her appearance, reapplying her makeup countless times even in the heat of an argument. She was usually calm and confident otherwise, doing what she set out to do with efficiency and intelligence.

Calisto/Shih-na was also prone to fits of uncontrollable laughter at inappropriate times, breaking her usual stoic countenance completely and, as Shih-na, giving her away. Miles Edgeworth's overall demeanor (mainly his serious facial expressions and style of speech) and Franziska von Karma's behavior with her whip triggered this laughter frequently, much to the annoyance of both. Gumshoe commented that her laugh sent chills down his spine, and Edgeworth agreed that when Calisto Yew laughed at serious statements, her laugh was creepy. Her hysterical laughter seemed to be the only consistent personality trait between her created personae, and so it may be the only part of her true personality that she allowed to show explicitly.

On the other hand, there are some indications that Shih-na's actions were not driven purely by Alba's orders. While she acted on orders to kill Faraday, she has admitted that it was hard for her to bring herself to kill him. Moreover, she gave up her "hair sticks" to Edgeworth and disclosed that she wasn't the killer and that Coachen wasn't the true leader of the smuggling ring, which eventually led Edgeworth to Alba as the true mastermind.

Name

 * Her Japanese alias surname, "Kazura" (葛), is the Japanese word for creeping or climbing plants such as ivy or vines, fitting with the plant-based name of her superior. With different kanji it means "wig", which suits her changing appearance.


 * Her Japanese alias' given name "Himiko" (氷見子) comes from the obscure shaman queen Himiko, as is the Japanese name of Morgan Fey. The name is often used for women who are very powerful or very spiritual.


 * Shiina (シーナ) is written with katakana characters, which indicates a non-Japanese origin. Shihna was a medieval Islamic term which roughly meant "military administrator".


 * "Calisto" is a genus of butterfly and "Yew" is a tree or shrub of the genus Taxus. This ties in with the butterfly and tree symbols of Babahl and Allebahst, and it also serves as a reflection of her accomplice's tree-referenced name, Quercus Alba. All species of yew also contain highly poisonous alkaloids known as taxanes. This may be a reference to her deadly nature.


 * "Calisto" may also come from the name of a mythological Greek figure whose name is derived from the Greek word "Kalliste" ("Καλλίστη") meaning "most beautiful"; this may be a reference to "Calisto Yew"'s frequently-applied make-up.


 * The full name "Calisto Yew" may also be a play on "callous to you".


 * She is often referred to as "Ms. Yew" by other characters, which could be a play on "miss you" and a reference to how she pretended to feel about Cece Yew.


 * "Shih-na", her English Interpol name, comes from her Japanese counterpart's.

Development

 * Her "Calisto Yew" persona may have been crafted as something of an antithesis to Miles Edgeworth. Whereas Edgeworth is an ever-serious prosecutor looking for the truth, Calisto Yew was a corrupt defense attorney, who was constantly laughing.


 * Calisto Yew's theme has a motif that is similar to that of Godot's theme.


 * Calisto Yew's earrings are similar to the measuring scales that are a common motif of Lady Justice, an allegorical personification of justice.


 * As Shih-na, her evening gloves have a heart design on them. This may be a play on the expression "wearing your heart on your sleeve", meaning that you are very open about your feelings. Although this may seem ironic considering her initially coming across as rather stoic as "Shih-na" (along with her hiding her true intentions and emotions as a spy for the smuggling ring), she does have a hard time hiding her amusement.