| Tabby Lloyd |
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Tabby Lloyd 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 Di-Jun Wang of Zheng Fa.
The president's speech
Three days prior to the speech at Gourd Lake given by President Wang, Lloyd got into contact with Bronco Knight, one of the president's bodyguards. Hoping that her cooperation would give her access to Wang and give her the big scoop she was looking for, Lloyd agreed to help Knight 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 while wearing a flashy, easily distinguishable red hood, point a laser pointer at the president at a specified time, and then dispose of the red hood, in order to give the impression that the assailant had disappeared into thin air.
Turning her yellow and aqua parka inside out so that it was now red, Lloyd turned on her sound recording device and listened to Wang's speech. While she was pointing the laser pointer at Wang, gunshots rang out and chaos ensued, during which Lloyd reversed her parka once again. Once things had calmed down, the president and his bodyguards had disappeared, having retreated into the seaplane they had arrived in. Lloyd, 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, Lloyd 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. Lloyd 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, Lloyd 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 Lloyd 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 Wang raising his fist, matching up with Faraday's picture and thus proving Lloyd to be the person in red.
Shortly after this deduction, Lloyd tried to admit her true role in the whole affair, only to being interrupted by Knight suddently emerging from the plane to reveal that one of the president's bodyguards had been killed, and demanding that Lloyd be arrested and taken into Zheng Fa custody. Luckily for Lloyd, Edgeworth was soon able to figure out that the assassination had been staged by Knight in an attempt to boost the president's waning popularity, and that Lloyd had been recruited to act as a possible scapegoat. Edgeworth proved that it had been Knight who had committed the murder, clearing Lloyd'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 Knight for a "real" assassination attempt.
A monster scoop
- Main articles: A Turnabout Forsaken & Turnabout for the Ages
Almost two weeks later, Lloyd was on the trail of a black market auction at the Bigg Building. Her mentor Lotta Hart went into the secret warehouse on the 51st floor, while Lloyd stayed outside and intercepted wireless communications. While listening in, Lloyd 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 Taurusaurus.
The pair decided to pursue the Taurusaurus story. During their investigation, Lloyd saw Eustace Winner 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, Shaun Fenn. It also turned out that Lloyd had unwittingly intercepted a bug that had been planted on Kay Faraday's Yatagarasu Pin.
Later on, Lloyd and Hart confronted the Global Studios film crew for Taurusaurus 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 Simeon Saint while he was executing his schemes to take down Excelsius Winner. When Edgeworth confronted Saint, he had Lloyd 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 Saint had killed Di-Jun Wang's body double, thereby tying him to other recent crimes.
Personality
Mugshot.
Lloyd 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
- Japanese - Mikiko Hayami (速水ミキコ):
- Her full Japanese name is a play on "hayamimi kikou" (早耳聞こう), which literally translates as "let's ask an insider"; "hayamimi" (早耳) means "keen on hearing" and "kiko" (聞こ) 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.
- English - Tabby Lloyd:
- Her full English name is a play on "tabloid", a term for a smaller print format newspaper that is most associated with sensationalized headlines and news stories.
- French - Agathe Papié:
- "Agathe Papié" is likely a play on "Gratte-papier", which has a meaning close to "pencil pusher".
- Additionally, "Agathe" could be a play on "agrafe" ("staple").
- Chinese - Shùnfēng Ĕr (瞬风 尔/瞬風 爾):
- Her full Chinese name has the same pronunciation as "顺风耳/順風耳" (Shùnfēng'ĕr), which literally translates as "clairaudience", it means a person in traditional Chinese novels who can hear voices a long way off or a well-informed person.
Unofficial
- Chinese - Sùshuǐ Měijǐzi (速水美纪子):
- Adapted from the Japanese name. The characters for "Měijǐzi" are one of the more popular Kanji combinations for Mikiko.
- English - Nicole Swift:
- Her full English name in the fan translation of Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit 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. Nicole could also be an Anglicization from Mikiko.
- French - Lara Porteuz:
- Her full French name in the fan translation is a play on "La raporteuse", referencing her profession as a reporter.
Development
- The writing on her parka contains numerous references:[1]
- The "KB[KB]" on the left sleeve - "KB Keibi" (KB警備); the Japanese equivalent of KB Security.
- "GO!YOU" on the left shoulder - for the "GoYou Airlines" (ゴーユー); the fan-translated patch had changed it to "iFly", to reflect the at the time localized name of the same company.
- "[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 Bronco Knight. The English fan translation changed this to "C "R" US", a reference to the forum website that the group for it was hosted on, Court Records[2], 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, and so does the bag that contained the revolver.
- "BANDO" across her chest - "Hoteru Bandō" (ﾎﾃﾙ･ﾊﾞﾝﾄﾞｰ); equivalent of the Gatewater Hotel.
- INTER[IOR] YAMAZAKI on the left waist - a reference to the Yamazaki Industrial Company (山崎産業), an interior design company that helped to design the family home of, in addition to having the same (last) name and Kanji as, series director Takeshi Yamazaki. The English fan translation changed this to "IKEO", a knock-off of the international interior design company IKEA.
References
- ↑ These were disclosed in an interview from the March 2011 issue of Japanese gaming magazine, Nintendo Dream. Due to how Lloyd's spritework was done, the last element of the original Japanese parka is never fully readable in normal gameplay.
- ↑ According to BigKlingy, a member of the fan-translation team, on NintendoCapriSun's playthrough.