Nicole Swift

Mikiko Hayami

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Nicole Swift V · T · F
Occupation	Reporter
Biological information
Reckoned birth year(s) (this is for age comparison purposes, and so may look odd; click on the question mark for details)?	1999
Documented age range (as recorded in court record profiles & case files)	20* (Turnabout Target)
Last known status	Alive (2019)
Eye color	Brown
Hair color	Brown
Height (the metric (cm) values are sourced from official guidebooks and may not reflect the relative sizes of characters as depicted in-game or in other official media)	5'2"; 159 cm
Associates
Family	None mentioned
Friends	None mentioned
Affiliates	Lotta Hart (mentor) Manosuke Naitō (accomplice) Miles Edgeworth ("second mentor") Kay Faraday (Edgeworth's assistant)
Names in other languages
Japanese (romanization written with the given name first)	速水ミキコ　(Mikiko Hayami)
Miscellaneous
Debut episode	Turnabout Target
Musical theme	"Restless People"

Mikiko Hayami

You got it! Snatching up the scoop, that's my job!

— Turnabout Target

Mikiko Hayami is a young reporter who is the protégé of Lotta Hart. She was present at Gourd Lake during the speech and attempted assassination of President Teikun Ō of Zheng Fa.

The president's speech

Main article: Turnabout Target

A few days prior to the speech at Gourd Lake given by President Ō, Hayami got into contact with Manosuke Naitō, one of the president's bodyguards. Hoping that her cooperation would give her access to Ō and give her the big scoop she was looking for, Hayami agreed to help Naitō with a staged assassination attempt, but wasn't told any details of the plan. Her role was simple: stand in the crowd that came to hear the speech, and point a laser pointer at the president at a specified time.

Turning her yellow and aqua parka inside out so that it was now red, Hayami turned on her sound recording device and listened to Ō's speech. While she was pointing the laser pointer at Ō, gunshots rang out and chaos ensued. Once things had calmed down, the president and his bodyguards had disappeared, having retreated into the seaplane they had arrived in. Hayami, along with the rest of the crowd, were made to stay where they were while law enforcement investigated the scene.

The investigation

Miles Edgeworth, having been specifically requested for by the Chief Prosecutor, soon arrived on the scene with detective Dick Gumshoe. Seeing the prosecutor and hoping for information she could use for her scoop, Hayami began jumping in the air, shouting, and asking Edgeworth as many questions as she could. However, she was ignored until she claimed to have information about what had happened. Hayami tried to withhold her information until he had told her what he knew. However, Edgeworth outsmarted her and had her reveal that she had heard a recording of the gunshots. Impressed, Hayami asked Edgeworth if he would be her second mentor, which Edgeworth politely refused.

Later, during Edgeworth's questioning of a strange ice-cream salesman calling himself "John Doe", the prosecutor confronted Hayami about being the red-hooded figure in the crowd that was the source of the laser pointer. She tried to argue that she was constantly moving during the president's speech and that Kay Faraday had merely taken the picture of the person wearing red at a different time. However, Edgeworth managed to prove that she was lying. Her commentary on her own tape contained her remark on Ō raising his fist, matching up with Faraday's picture and thus proving Hayami to be the person in red.

Shortly after this deduction, Naitō emerged from the plane to reveal that one of the president's bodyguards had been killed and demanded that Hayami be arrested and taken into Zheng Fa custody. Luckily for Hayami, Edgeworth was soon able to figure out that the assassination had been staged by Naitō in an attempt to boost the president's waning popularity, and that Hayami had been recruited to act as a scapegoat. Edgeworth proved that it had been Naitō who had committed the murder, clearing Hayami's name. She was still taken into custody as an accomplice in the fake assassination, but was soon released with no lasting consequences after the police agreed to partially cover up the incident and indict Naitō for a "real" assassination attempt.

A monster scoop

Main articles: The Forgotten Turnabout and The Grand Turnabout

Almost two weeks later, Hayami was on the trail of a black market auction at the Big Tower. Her mentor Lotta Hart went into the secret warehouse on the 51st floor, while Hayami stayed outside and intercepted wireless communications. While listening in, Hayami heard the sound of burning flames, while Hart saw a giant eye outside a window. When the two met up two days later, they concluded that they had witnessed the great monster Borumosu.

The pair decided to pursue the Borumosu story. During their investigation, Hayami saw Yumihiko Ichiyanagi being kidnapped by two men in black. She later encountered Miles Edgeworth, who was looking for a boy, and she told him about the kidnapping before he could even describe what the boy looked like. It turned out that he had been looking for a different boy, Shimon Aizawa. It also turned out that Hayami had unwittingly intercepted a bug that had been planted on Kay Faraday's Yatagarasu's Badge.

Later on, Hayami and Hart confronted the Global Studios film crew for The Great Monster Borumosu vs Gourdy, accusing them of hiding real monsters. However, Edgeworth arrived on the scene and managed to explain everything; the eye and the flames had been from a hot air balloon that had been used by Sōta Sarushiro while he was executing his schemes to take down Bansai Ichiyanagi. When Edgeworth confronted Sarushiro, he had Hayami play the recording of the flames (in reality the balloon's flame used to keep it aloft) to hear a gunshot hitting the balloon. This helped Edgeworth prove that Sarushiro had killed Teikun Ō's body double, thereby tying him to other recent crimes.

Personality

Hayami's mugshot.

Hayami shares numerous similarities to her mentor Lotta Hart. She is brash, loud, and determined, and has a similar style of speech to Hart's, though she lacks Hart's self-styled turns of phrase. She is always looking out for a scoop, which sometimes gets her in trouble, especially with the fake assassination attempt. Her hastiness often ends up leading people like Miles Edgeworth the wrong way, though somehow everything still works out in the end. Edgeworth was able to extract information out of her by waiting out her agitation, as she would blurt out information after calming down.

Name

• Her full Japanese name is a play on "hayamimi kikou" (早耳聞こう), which literally translates as "listen insider"; "hayamimi" means "keen on hearing" and "kiko" means "to hear", "to listen", or "to ask". This is likely a reference to either her recording the gunshots during the "assassination", or simply to her occupation.

• Hayami's full English name in the fan translation of Gyakuten Kenji 2 is "Nicole Swift". "Nicole" is a French name that roughly means "victory of the people" (possibly referencing her eventual clearance of suspicion), while "Swift" may be a reference to her impulsive personality.

Development

• The writing on her parka contains numerous references:

• The "KB[KB]" on the left sleeve - "KB Keibi" (KB警備); the Japanese equivalent of KB Security.

• "GO!YOU" on the left shoulder - "GoYou airlines" (ゴーユー); equivalent of iFly Airlines.

• "[EI]TO [SA]TSUEIJO" on the right sleeve - "Eito Satsueijo" (英都撮影所); equivalent of Global Studios.

• "TaTo" on the front of the hood - "Tatsurōtoizu" (ﾀﾂﾛｰﾄｲｽﾞ), lit. "Tatsuro Toys", a fictitious toy company created by Tatsuro Iwamoto, a freelance illustrator who worked as the art director for the Ace Attorney series, along with providing the Japanese in-game interjection voices of Miles Edgeworth and Manosuke Naitō. The English fan translation changed this to "C "R" US", with the "R" being mirrored like the real world toy retailer Toys "R" Us.

• "PIPE" written below the neck, along with the illustration of a smoking pipe - a subtle reference to the tracksuit Will Powers wore during Turnabout Samurai, implying that both are from the same fictional clothing brand. Her shoes also have the pipe symbol on their sides.

• "BANDO" across her chest - "Hoteru Bandō" (ﾎﾃﾙ･ﾊﾞﾝﾄﾞｰ); equivalent of the Gatewater Hotel.