December 25th, 2019

Phoenix Wright's Room

7:00 AM

---

It was a bright Christmas morning, and Phoenix Wright was enjoying a wonderful dream.

"Ho ho ho! I know you've been a very good boy this year, Phoenix, so I've got a very special present to give you!"

"What is it Santa?" Nick asked eagerly. For some reason he was giddy beyond belief.

"It's an attorney's badge!" Santa declared as he held out the familiar golden badge that, up until April of that year, Phoenix had been wearing on his beloved blue suit.

"Yes! Thank you Santa!" Phoenix yelled in excitement as he ran to gave Santa the biggest hug he could muster.

"!"

"Uh...Merry Christmas to you too, Nick. Now can you let go of me before I break?" Maya asked, laughing.

Nick's eyes flew open and he realised that his dream had ended. He quickly withdrew his arms, blushing. "Sorry about that, I was, uh, having a dream."

"Yeah, I figured as much. Now come on, those girls have probably opened up their presents already." Maya grabbed Nick's hand and led him out of the bedroom, but froze as soon as she got a look at the building. Crude cut-outs of misletoes were strewn across the building, and Pearl and Trucy stood at the bottom of the stairs, grinning. Pearl pointed her finger at Maya and Phoenix, and declared "Now you have to kiss each other!"

Maya was the first to notice. Those clever little girls had put a misletoe directly over the bedroom door, in the hopes that Nick and Maya would come out together. Phoenix followed Maya's gaze, and stepped backwards, noticing the misletoe.

"Kiss, kiss, kiss!" Trucy cheered.

"Is this what you two were up to all night?" Phoenix demanded. He knew that Trucy was sneaky, but he hadn't imagined something like this.

"Less talking, more smooching!" Trucy yelled.
"Oh come on, can't you just give this a rest already?" Maya sighed. "Nick and I aren't dating, and we're not going to kiss. Now can you please let it go?"
"No way, Mystic Maya! We refuse to move until you two show your love for each other!"
Now Phoenix sighed. "Look, will you leave us alone if we just kiss?"
Maya turned to look at him, surprised. "Hey! You can't just give in that easily!"
"Yep, we promise, Daddy!" Trucy said, getting on her knees and making a begging gesture.
Nick turned to face Maya and pressed his lips up against hers, while also wrapping his arms around her to further convince the girls. The sound of them shrieking in delight and scampering off was his cue to stop.
"W-wow..." Maya said as he pulled away. Lost for words, "wow" was all she could think of saying. Christmas morning was off to an awesome start already, and she hadn't even been near the presents yet.
"Um...We'd better go open our gifts, right?" Nick said sheepishly, cursing himself inwardly.'We'd better go open our gifts'? Nice going, Wright. Real romantic.
"Oh r-right...gifts..." Right now, the only present Maya really wanted was the feeling of Nick's lips against hers one more time, but she decided to suck it up, and she walked downsaris with Nick. As they reached the main floor, Pearl and Trucy began giggling again.
"What's so funny?" Nick asked cautiously.
The two girls pointed above Nick and Maya's heads, towards yet another misletoe.
Phoenix and Maya groaned.

After spending the next few minutes dodging all of the misletoes plastered around the house, Nick and Maya finally made it over to the Christmas tree and began to open their presents. Pearl's gifts seemed to benefit her more than they did them: she had given Maya two tickets to the Winter Love Festival, causing a rather annoyed expression to appear on Maya's face. For Nick, Pearl had bought him a book on ways to impress a girl, as well as a burger cookbook. Rather than saying anything, he turned towards Trucy's presents. Trucy had bought her father a warm sweater and the Piano playing for Dummies instruction book, which caused laughter from everybody. Trucy gave Maya several tickets to the Wonder Bar, as Maya always loved watching Trucy's magic acts.
"Thank you, Trucy. I'll be sure to come visit soon!" Maya said cheerfully. The embarassment that Trucy and Pearl had put her through just a few minutes before seemed to have been forgotten.
"You're welcome! But daddy, I was, um, wondering what this is." Trucy said, holding up a pair of giant blue bloomers, with small hearts surrounding them. "I think they might be a bit too big."
Maya burst into laughter. "Ha ha ha! I always knew this day would happen: Nick has officially lost it."
"No I haven't!" Nick protested. "They're...they're magic panties! When I went to go buy Trucy a new wand for Christmas, the shop owner told me that they were a one-of-a-kind trick. I think you can pull stuff out of them, or something. I'm not exactly sure how it works, to be honest..."
"Hmm..."Trucy said thoughtfully, examining the panties carefully.
"Nick, you're so naive. He was probably just trying to con you out of your-"
"Got it!" Trucy declared, pulling Nick's signature blue hat out of the magic panties, and handing it to her daddy. She then proceeded to pull out the new clothes Pearl had got for Christmas, the Christmas decorations that Phoenix had put outside, and the last slice of cold pizza in the fridge. Maya was dumbstruck. Nick grinned.
"You were saying?" He asked smugly.
"H-how did you do that?" Maya begged. "That was so cool!"
"Mystic Maya! You should know that a magician can never reveal their secrets! Right, Trucy?"
"That's right, Pearl. I can't tell you." Trucy said, enjoying her new magical gift. "Thank you, Daddy!"
Now it was time for Nick and Maya to exchange gifts. Maya saw her gift at the side of the Christmas tree and dashed for it, quickly examining the package before ripping through the wrapping paper viciously. "Let's see here....Oh. My. GOD! NO WAY!!! It's an autographed copy of the Essential Samurai Collection DVD! Nick, how in the world did you get this!? It's not supposed to come out until next month!"
"Well, I called in a really big favor from Mr. Powers."
Maya practically leaped on to him in excitement, hugging him and screaming thank you over and over again. "This is the best gift ever!" She announced when she had stopped thanking Phoenix. Suddenly realizing that Nick still hadn't recieved his gift, Maya snatched a gift from beneath the tree.

"Um...Well, this might not be as awesome as the Essential Samurai Collection, but I worked really hard on it..." Maya said quietly. She held out the gift and averted her gaze, unsure of what Phoenix would think. Nick took the present from Maya and opened it gently to discover a home-made book of some sort, and was taken back at what he found inside. It was a scrapbook of all the times Phoenix and Maya had shared together. She had kept almost everything, from a reciept for their first night out for burgers to a picture of them taking the Special Course together. The book was half full of pictures, drawings, and memorabilia. The other half was blank.
"It's our scrapbook. I was watching this movie where a guy and a girl decided to make a scrapbook together, and I thought it would be a pretty cool idea." Maya explained. She decided to leave out the tiny detail that thanks to spending time together on the scrapbook that the two people fell in love, after all, Nick didn't need to know that. "I left half of it blank...You know, for all the memories that we're going to have." Maya blushed while saying the last part. It sounded a lot less cheesier when people said stuff like this on TV.

Nick smiled. "Sounds good to me. Thank you Maya." Nick pulled her into a hug, and neither of them said anything. Pearl gave Trucy a signal which meant something along the lines of "Let's leave Mystic Maya alone with her special someone", and the two dismissed themselves. As Phoenix pulled away from the hug, Maya looked down at her Love Festival tickets dissapointedly and picked them up, closely examining them.
"So...got any plans for January 11th, 2020?" She asked sarcastically. How Pearl had even got the tickets was a mystery to her, but they probably were expensive. Maybe I should ask Nick to it... You know, just so the tickets don't go to waste, Maya thought.
Nick smirked. "I'll have to check my calendar."
Maya tossed down the tickets, annoyed. "Pearly just isn't going to stop, is she?"
"I don't know. I'm starting to get worried, I wonder how far she's willing to go just to get us together..."
"Try not to think too hard about it. This is...this is kind of my fault...Um, I'm not really sure how to tell you this, but when I returned to Kurain for training 2 years ago, well...I might have kinda suggested to Pearl that I had a crush on you...sort of."

"And Nick's really strong too, and he's got the coolest hair I've ever seen, oh, and he's so nice, he gets me burgers all the time, he's great."
"Mr. Nick sounds like a perfect gentleman. Are you in love with him, Mystic Maya?"
"In love? I don't know about being in love, but he is really cute...and he's funny, and handsome, and, well, I don't know!"

"Really?...What about now?" Nick asked, somewhat flattered, and also surprised. He had no idea Maya had felt that way about him back then.
"What?"
"I mean, uh, do you still have a crush on me?" Nick repeated, and as if on cue one large psyche-lock appeared in front of Maya. It certainly brought back some memories for him, but since he was no longer a lawyer he didn't exactly have a habit of wandering around with a pile of evidence. However, he thought of another way to break this psyche-lock.
"I have a crush on you." He admitted, now positive that Maya's feelings were reciprocal.
"Y-you do!?" Maya asked, probably a little too excitedly. Getting control of herself, she whispered "I have a crush on you too", breaking her own psyche-lock.
Without warning, Nick quickly kissed Maya. What started as a tiny peck on the lips was soon reciprocated and it escalated into an exhilirating, passionate kiss. Maya tossed her arms around Nick, mumbling "I love you" in between kisses. Nick pulled her closer, not wanting to let her go. He had spent far too long waiting for this. He could feel tears running down his cheeks, but he soon realized that the tears didn't belong to him. He pulled away.
"What's wrong?" he asked, noticing that Maya was crying.
"Nothing...I've just wanted to do that for a really long time." She replied, laughing. "It looks like we didn't need the misletoes after all, huh?"

Later that day...

"Uh, my email is lovely_little_pearl12hotmail." Pearl told Trucy at the train station.
"Mine's trucy_ace_magician01hotmail. I'll make sure to e-mail you soon, ok?"
"Ok. See you soon, Trucy!" Pearl gave a hug to her friend (and if things went really well with Mystic Maya and Mr. Nick, relative) and hopped onto the train heading back to Kurain. Meanwhile, Phoenix and Maya were having an emotional goodbye.
"Are you sure you can't stay one more night?"
"Nick, you know I can't. I'm the Master of Kurain Village, and the spirit mediums need me!" Maya said. She wished she didn't have to go yet either, but she couldn't afford to stay any longer. Saying goodbye to Nick never seemed to get any easier.
"I need you too..." Nick muttered quietly, hoping Maya wouldn't hear him. She did.
Maya lifted up his chin, forcing him to look at her. "I know, and I need you. But unfortunately we have to be apart for now, like the Golden Samurai and his true love the Princess of Silver. I promise I'll visit you soon though, ok? After all, that scrapbook's not going to fill itself." Maya gave Nick a sad smile, trying not to cry. Nick returned a tiny smile.
"Goodbye Nick." Maya whispered, kissing him gently.
"See you soon, Maya."
Realizing that the longer she stayed, the harder it was to leave, Maya picked up her suitcase and walked towards the train, stopping to give Trucy a goodbye hug. She boarded the train and took a seat beside Pearl, staring out of the window. Nick and Trucy waved goodbye, and Maya returned a half-hearted wave as the train began to move. As she looked down at the floor, Maya noticeda piece of paper sticking out of her suitcase. She tugged it out: it was one of the tickets for the Winter Love Festival. Hiding it from Pearl, Maya quickly put it in her Master's Robe.
It's a good thing I kept these, she thought, I might just use them after all.

After Trucy had returned home and taken all of the misletoes down in the Wright Anything Agency, she skipped upstairs and went on her computer. She logged in and sent an e-mail to Pearl:

Dear Agent Pearl,

Subject "Daddy" has spent the entire afternoon drawing hearts in the scrapbook Subject "Mystic" got him. I also saw him giving Subject Mystic a kiss at the train station, and I don't think I saw any misletoes around. When I asked him about it, he just smiled. Operation Misletoe was a complete success. Now we just have to get Subject Daddy to propose to Subject Mystic, so we need to come up with a plan. I can probably use my Magic Panties to get a ring, so all we have to do is convince Daddy to propose. Any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Agent Trucy
---