#fair. there’s no proof so Phoenix shouldn’t have to apologize if he didn’t do it

[borom1r]

I have thoughts abt Beanix but they are NOT coherent ooooargh!!!! HIM!!!!!!!

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 20: in which I allow Phoenix to channel my frustration at how long this case took to end, make up more backstory for a character who’s dead when we meet them in an extra DLC case, and the orca case still will continue for one more chapter after this.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Blackquill is out for blood today.

Not that he wasn’t yesterday, or in April - not that this isn’t just his default state. But Phoenix simply tries to tell the judge that the defense is ready and gets attacked by the damn hawk. “Ready,” Blackquill drawls, and now Phoenix is no longer ready, and that’s how the trial starts, with some loose feathery fluff fallen on his scattered notes laid out on the bench, and talons perilously close to his eyes. 

If this is a test of Phoenix, Edgeworth seeing what he’ll put up with, the answer is “a lot”, and he’d really be glad if Edgeworth would go ahead and ban the bird.

Dr Crab is the first witness up on the stand, and though he wasn’t the intended witness for today, Blackquill gives no hint of that. But while it might not be what the prosecution wants, a chance to cross-examine Crab, on the record, all eyes of the court watching, to dig the truth out of him, is exactly what Phoenix wants. 

(Rimes is still an open question, why he’s holding back on testifying. He made clear yesterday that he wants to help Sasha, wishes they would’ve protected her better, and doesn’t trust Orla. Does he know something that he knows would further implicate Sasha and that’s what he’s refusing to say? Does he still actually believe somehow that Orla did it but he doesn’t want to be the man to damn the orca with his testimony, knowing how distraught Sasha would be? Does he know who actually did it? Did he actually do it but is he a murderer who has a conscience and still doesn’t want his friend to take the fall?)

No time to speculate on Rimes. His current suspect is the man on the witness stand, and maybe Dr Crab didn’t kill Jack Shipley, but he did try to kill Orla, didn’t he?

What do they know? Phoenix can prove that the murder happened with Orla right nearby - the Luminol reactions on her skin in places where she herself wasn’t bleeding. And he can say that could have happened at the time Dr Crab was scheduled to meet the victim at the orca pool. It could’ve been drained then too. They only have Crab’s own word that he didn’t go. And then they only have his own word that the sleeping pills that he purchased were stolen out of his laboratory. Uh huh, certainly, that’s real convenient. 

But they don’t have proof, solidly, and the burden of proof lies with the defense. Phoenix’s case that it was Dr Crab who tried to kill Orla (they’re still working their way, slowly, back to Jack Shipley’s murder) is broken by the mere possibility that someone else could have taken and used the sleeping pills. He’s not the prosecution, even if he feels like it right now. This isn’t enough for the defense. All it’s enough for is to piss Dr Crab off that he, an honorable veterinarian, is being accused of trying to kill an animal in his care. 

“Wright-dono,” Blackquill says after Dr Crab’s fury at the slander has abated, “surely you are not suggesting that the orca was drugged for fear that it as a witness would speak to the truth of the murder?” He speaks with a cold condescension that tells Phoenix he knows, yes, this is exactly what Phoenix is suggesting, but he is still going to kindly repeat this back to him to allow him to hear it from another’s mouth and thus reconsider the absolute stupidity of this statement.

Phoenix is not going to reconsider the absolute stupidity of this statement. He’s bluffed on stupider. “Orcas are very intelligent creatures,” he says. “A veterinarian would of course know this, and it’s not that much of a stretch to think that he should be concerned about what Orla might be able to indicate. Besides,” he adds, knowing that when this case is over Edgeworth is going to take the transcript and highlight this section and smack him in the face with it, “I have it on good authority that the victim, Jack Shipley, was known to be able to converse with the orca. Who’s to say—” 

Blackquill slams his hand down several times on the bench, laughing as he does, loud and ugly mirth over the clang of his cuffs also hitting the wood and the rattle of the chain. “I should have expected this of you, Wright-dono. Your students were the ones who tried to make the phantasm of a yokai out to be a very real murderer. More the fool am I to have hoped that you would be any better than stooping to claiming magic is real.” 

He hoped. Is he serious right now - he knows for a fact that Tenma Taro is very real, and he was the one who told Edgeworth that. He learned that without being physically present there, must have heard what his hawk heard, and he says magic isn’t real. He probably thinks it’s funny, wouldn’t he, to say shit he knows isn’t true knowing that it will make Phoenix sound like more of a lunatic. Knowing that Phoenix can’t actually know what he believes about anything he says, because his presence blinds Phoenix’s Sight. 

(The more he thinks about that, the more disturbed he gets. That shouldn’t happen. The Sight sees through fae glamours that a changeling might not know she has in place; the Sight gives him glimpses of a changeling who knows but is trying to deny what he is. Klavier’s disappearing act hits both sets of eyes; Pearl doesn’t seem any more out of place with one or the other. It takes his magatama for that. But Blackquill was confusing even Pearl - hiding, she said. Hiding what he is, isn’t that what she said - or did she say who? What kind of magic, or force of will, or whatever, can possibly—)

“And tell me, presuming even that the victim could commune with the orca, what then is your plan? Do you know of some ritual to bring those very truly dead back to life so that our dead man may translate the orca for us - and should you know such, please, do enlighten me as to why we shouldn’t just ask the dead man to tell us who killed him.” He’s still smirking. Phoenix hates him.

“That was just an example,” Phoenix says. “I believe the defendant has also some ability to know what the orca is communicating.”

He glances at Sasha, who looks extremely alarmed. Maybe that he’s fallen to making this point in court, or maybe she was just teasing him when she said she was translating Orla. Well. Too late to take it back now. 

“Yes, of course.” Blackquill lowers his chin, glowering at Phoenix. “We will ask the orca about the murder the defendant committed, and the defendant shall translate her testimony for us. Tell me, do you see an issue with that?”

“Er…” Yeah. Yeah, that’s an issue.

Dr Crab drums his fingers on the witness stand. “If you’re finished with this line of consideration, may I add something? Think, Mr Lawyer, that had I wanted to poison Orla - who was it that treated and saved her when you came running to say something was wrong?” He waits for a moment’s emphasis, during which time Phoenix considers that he didn’t say they were out of their minds debating talking to an orca, and then adds, “Me.”

“Well,” Phoenix says. Shit, that’s true. He could’ve just let her die, couldn’t he? “Except shouldn’t you have known what was going on with her, without Pearl having to come get you? The TORPEDO is constantly monitoring, right? It should’ve been telling you something was going on!”

“Son of a—” Dr Crab inhales and blows out his breath through gritted teeth. “Son of a gun. You really had to remember that all and bring it up, huh? You’re not as birdbrained as you look.”

“Objection.” Blackquill doesn’t have to yell to be heard; he drops the courtroom into silence no matter how quietly he speaks. Is it magic or just another trick of his terrifying presence? “The defense’s brain does not merit this disparaging comparison to birds - they are far smarter than he.”

“Hmph.” Dr Crab shakes his head. “Bird-lover, I should’ve guessed.” Taka isn’t on Blackquill’s shoulder right now, but maybe Dr Crab saw it when Blackquill spoke with him yesterday. Is Taka a jailbird too? “You and I aren’t destined for friendship then.”

Someone should give Blackquill one of those penguin calendars when this trial is over. It might brighten up his prison cell a bit. 

“My apologies, Dr Crab.” Phoenix feels like he’s interrupting something but it might be better that way, before Blackquill picks a full-on fight with a veterinarian about how smart birds on average are or aren’t. (Varies across species, surely? Crows are smart; Kay harps on that all the time, but Phoenix still wouldn’t get anything out of calling a crow to testify unless Kay was there translating. Parrots, though—) “But I did warn you yesterday that if it would help Sasha’s case, I would divulge whatever it took.”

“Back up one moment,” Blackquill cuts in. “What is this ‘TORPEDO’?”

And Phoenix’s next accusatory tangent lies dead in the water by the end of it, with Dr Crab pissed that Phoenix has announced his illegal activity in court - fair enough - and Blackquill puzzling out that yes, Dr Crab would be telling the truth when he said he didn’t get any warning data on Orla. The sensor is attached in her tank and sends sound waves through the water, but if there’s no water in the tank - or in, say, half of the tank, the half that was drained where the police found an odd-looking sensor during their investigation - then no data gets communicated. Therefore, Dr Crab doesn’t know that Orla is in trouble, and can’t come running to save her. 

Bizarre, really, to see Blackquill of all people be the one to figure out why the aquarium’s high-tech equipment was and wasn’t working the way it does. Is Phoenix projecting a little about his own technological inadequacies? Maybe. Is it also just generally shocking to see a man who talks and acts like he was dropped here straight from feudal Japan so quickly grasp what’s going on with this monitoring system that he only had explained to him three minutes ago? Yes. And is it frustrating when, by knowing that the sensor in Orla’s pool only turned off twice, during the overnight cleaning and during the police investigation, they know that the pool was never drained another time, leaving no other time that the victim could’ve been killed in the orca pool room, meaning that Sasha is the only one who could’ve killed the victim? Absolutely. 

His theory broken down by tiny inconsistencies that add up into something bigger; this is what it’s like to be the prosecution. Except by this point Phoenix is pretty sure Dr Crab didn’t actually try to kill Orla. He’s pretty sure of that even when he objects that someone did try and kill Orla, no way around it, no matter if it wasn’t Dr Crab. Two people fed Orla during the trial yesterday, when the drug would’ve gotten into her system. Sasha was one - unfortunately, because nothing can be easy - and the other was Marlon Rimes.

Not quite the place he thought this would end up, to be honest.

-

The judge calls a short recess for Rimes to be summoned, and Blackquill cuts that down to a minute and a half because Rimes is apparently already here in the courthouse. It leaves Athena enough time to say she can’t belive this, either, and Dr Crab to drop Azura’s charm, the one Rifle ate, on the defense’s bench and tell them that he certainly doesn’t want to accuse either Sasha or Marlon, but the truth is what it is and it’s up to them to figure it out, and best of luck to them. “Now I think I should’ve learned Japanese,” Athena says, holding the charm up close to her face and then wrinkling her nose and quickly pushing it away, some fishy smell remaining to bother her. From that distance she squints at the characters inked on the front. “Like I kept going back and forth on whether I wanted to, but it wasn’t as practical as the languages for countries I was studying in, and then with the Bar too—”

“Athena, you really don’t need to justify not knowing how to read Japanese.” It’s like she thinks she’s supposed to be able to do everything all at once, and she falls silent, looking at him and then back down at the charm.

“I think these are like - not supposed to be opened? Or it’s bad luck to open it or maybe I’m thinking of something else.”

“Better hold off on that, then.” Phoenix holds out his hand and she drops it in his palm and then Fulbright ushers Rimes up to the stand and that’s the end of Blackquill’s speedrun recess.

Rimes, despite being at the courthouse, apparently doesn’t know what was happening in the trial, implying that Blackquill just dropped him in a lobby and left him there and - other than the hawk attack right at the start, Phoenix hasn’t actually seen Taka around. He pictures Rimes sitting paralyzed with fear under the watchful and murderous eyes of the prosecution’s attack bird. That’s probably how it was. 

“Mr Rimes,” the judge says, probably pleased that for once he’s not the most clueless person in the courtroom. “You are under suspicion of the attempted murder of the orca.”

Phoenix decides that if it’d bad luck to fiddle with this charm, he’s already cursed enough as-is, and he might as well go ahead and do it. There’s something inside the little packet, another thin slip of paper, and he slides it out to find a small photograph, showing Rimes with his arm around the dark-haired young woman from DePlume’s book. Azura Summers, bright-eyed and alive, with an anchor-shaped orca whistle around her neck and behind her and Rimes, the orca.

Now that’s a hell of an interesting revelation, isn’t it. Phoenix sets the charm down on the bench and turns his attention to Rimes, on-stand, hollow-eyed and gone quiet at the accusation. “Fine,” he says. “If that’s already out - I’ll tell the truth.”

And he again begins to insist that Orla was the one to kill the victim.

“We proved yesterday that she didn’t!” Athena slams her fist down on the bench, then winces. “Mr Rimes, why are you lying!”

“I ain’t lying,” Rimes protests. “And that’s better for you! Sasha goes free if the orca did it, right?” 

Athena’s mouth hangs open in silent fury. Blackquill stares Phoenix down coldly, and his hawk a mirror of him but with yellow eyes instead of black. “Getting a witness to lie to get your client off the hook? That’s a low, underhanded trick, Wright-dono, even for you.”

A pit opens wide in Phoenix’s stomach. His old reputation, the one Kristoph wove for him, ever precedes him. “Prosecutor Blackquill,” he says, as evenly as he can, hoping as he does that Athena is too distracted with her own anger to notice the emotional tangle that he is caught up in. “I fought for Orla’s acquittal yesterday, and I stand by that today. Ms Buckler believes in Orla’s innocence - I would be letting her down if I saved her at the cost of someone she loves.”

Blackquill’s expression darkens further. He is a thundercloud, a shadow, a wraith, a nightmare made flesh, and for someone who doesn’t have a perfect win record and never was a picture of prosecutorial perfection, he certainly acts like one of those prosecutors who would do anything to get their win, to the cost of the person in the defendant’s seat. Out for the blood of everyone in the courtroom.

Time to prove that Phoenix is as good as his word. “Now, Mr Rimes, let’s talk about your testimony. Your claim is that the orca killed the victim by flinging him up into the air and hitting the water, which is roughly a thirty-foot fall based on the distance between the ceiling and the water. The autopsy report makes clear that the cause of death was something more around sixty feet - sixty-five feet being the depth of the orca pool. If there was still water in the pool as you said, that simply wouldn’t be possible.”

“Ah—” Rimes jerks back away from the stand. 

“That’s rather decisive, isn’t it?” the judge muses. “We’re returning to the orca not having done it, then.”

“We are,” Blackquill agrees, his eyes closed. “As I expected. I could not believe this tripe for a moment. I am grateful, Wright-dono, that you shut up this witness on my behalf. Now, the attempted murder of the orca is not the issue we are deliberating, so once again, we prove that Sasha Buckler is the only person who could have killed the victim.”

“Wait,” Rimes says. “Shit. That’s not—”

Every turn they take, Sasha is still the only one who could be the killer. The location and the card key usage record lock in that conclusion. If there’s any way for someone who isn’t Sasha to be the killer - if he turns it around, what scenario leaves the possibility for someone else to be the killer? The location would have to be somewhere that wasn’t the pool room, somewhere that anyone could access, and somewhere with a long way to fall, same as the drained pool. And somewhere that the orca was, to leave blood on her.

The show stage pool.

“Objection!” Phoenix yells it not quite sure what he’s objecting to, having missed the last thirty seconds or so of the conversation, but Blackquill stands expectant, waiting, and the judge was raising his gavel, and that’s the time when there’s no time to think, just object. “I have an objection!”

“Do you,” Blackquill asks, “or are you merely saying those words in a desperate bid for more time?” He tilts his head slightly to the side, considering Phoenix, and adds, “You appear rather sick. Best for your health if you just lie down and accept this, I’d wager.”

I’d wager. One of them in this courtroom is actually a professional gambler, and it’s not the man saying that. What the hell does he think he knows? “Consider,” Phoenix says. “What if the scene of the crime was somewhere else?”

Definitely not his strongest opening, but he’s already put it out there, so he’s got to run with it. “The prosecution’s argument is that, because only the victim and defendant entered the orca pool room when there was no water in the tank, that only the defendant could have killed him, correct?” Blackquill nods curtly. “But if the murder actually took place somewhere else, then it’s very possible that someone else who is not Sasha Buckler could have committed it.”

“Do you know where you’re taking this argument?” Athena asks quietly.

“Actually, sort of, yes.” In a sense, as long as where he’s taking this argument doesn’t immediately need evidence.

“Mr Wright, I hope you aren’t - as I recall you often doing - just bluffing, are you?” All the things that the judge could remember about Phoenix’s defenses after eight years absent from court, and this is what stuck.

“If the show stage pool was drained, it would be equally possible to fall to one’s death there,” Phoenix says. There, proof that he isn’t totally bluffing: an actual suggestion of where this hypothetical other crime scene could be. 

Blackquill rubs his chin, frowning, for several seconds, staring out into somewhere in the middle of the courtroom floor. “Wright-dono,” he says, eyes unblinking and not even moving in Phoenix’s direction, “you are a disgrace to your profession.”

“There’s a hoist for moving the orca and props between the two pools.” If he doesn’t acknowledge Blackquill’s barbs, will he eventually stop throwing them? Probably not; that never made middle school bullies stop, either. (Larry dumping a cup of dirty paint water on someone’s head was a better solution. Still probably won’t work on Blackquill.) “It wouldn’t be difficult to move a body via the same method.”

“You have no idea what you are spewing, do you?” Something snaps behind Blackquill’s eyes and he jerks his head up. “Your desperate conjecture creates an entirely new crime scene and even then you cannot follow it through to realize that your new scenario is another malformed coffin for your defense. Tell me, how is it you have deluded yourself into believing that you belong on this battlefield, in this courtroom? Have you truly begun to believe your own mad bluffs?”

The Twisted Samurai knows where to strike to draw blood, if Phoenix had anything more than ice and stone left in his veins. Of course he knows he doesn’t belong back here, but he’ll be damned if he lets Edgeworth down. That’s more important. And now that he’s here, he won’t let Sasha down. 

Blackquill raises his fists and slams them in tandem down on the bench. The whole courtroom seems to rattle with the force of the impact, and the chain between his shackles doesn’t hold up. It breaks apart, again, giving Blackquill the full use of his arms, fully preparing him to strike. (There’s something beyond disturbing about the thought that he could do this at any time and simply chooses not to. He could make a break for it from the courtroom if he really wanted. Edgeworth’s met with him one-on-one before. Blackquill could’ve killed him if he wanted to, surely. Phoenix spent seven years trying to keep Edgeworth away and safe from one murdering, magic-using lawyer, and here he was arranging this, whatever the hell this is, with a different one.)

“Well, if you think you’re so smart, then what do you think is so wrong about Mr Wright’s theory?” Athena demands. She’s a good person to have in his corner, all that energy bursting forth, making her not fearless - she shrank away from Blackquill like the rest of them - but furious enough to work past it. Even if she did ask Phoenix if he actually knew what he was arguing. Can’t exactly blame her for it.

The hoist only operates from the orca pool room, meaning that it still had to be Sasha who moved the body, as the only person who did, or could, enter. No way around it. But Sasha could have, theoretically, moved it unknowingly, when she asked for Rimes’ help hiding a prop, the skull rock. If the body was hidden in there—

“Huh,” Rimes says, turning his eyes down toward the stand. “You’re way smarter than I expected, Mr Wright.” Why does everyone keep saying that? “I thought I could hide my involvement, but, yeah, I helped Sasha move and hide the captain’s body after he died at the show pool.”

“Mr Rimes, please stop committing perjury.” Phoenix puts his head in his hands. Presuming that this isn’t more perjury, which he will presume that this is more perjury because Rimes is still saying that the orca killed the victim. 

“For once, I agree with the defense,” Blackquill says. “What did I bother putting you on the stand for, if you have nothing but nonsense for testimony!”

“It’s the truth!” Rimes protests. “I didn’t kill the captain, and Sasha didn’t either! She’s only guilty of trying to protect that damn orca! It flipped him way up in the air and he died when he hit the water.” His eyes have glazed over, obviously remembering something, but what, Phoenix can’t say if he is, as he is, assuming this is still lies. If Rimes murdered Shipley, then wouldn’t he want Sasha to take the fall? It would be easier than watching his story unravel trying to insist the orca did it. “And all the spectators screaming when his body came up, I can’t get it outta my head. Sasha and I were already gonna move the skull rock so we put his body in it to hide it; we were gonna figure out what to do in the morning. But then Ms DePlume found out, and I freaked.”

Spectators? What in hell is he talking about? It was the middle of the night. “Hm.” Athena draws a circle in the air with her gloved fingers, whipping up one of her emotional analysis screens. “I think I can take this one, Mr Wright. There’s a ton of noise I’m hearing. It’s coming up as - ah.” Having finished loading, Widget makes some horrible blaring noises and the projected display flashes between blue and red. “Completely out of control anger and sadness.”

“Can you do something with that?” Phoenix asks. She nods. “If there’s anything you can hone in on about that ‘spectators’ line—”

“That’s definitely an odd spot.” Athena scratches her chin. “And odd, inconsistent spots like that usually have something to do with it. Poke him on that and see what he says.”

He says that he made a mistake. An odd one to make, without a doubt; they’ve been talking about how this case happened during overnight cleaning for two days now, and here’s Rimes, talking like it happened in the middle of a show. “Pointing that out made some of the sadness subside,” Athena says, further pondering the screen and swiping back and forth between statements of the testimony. “I wonder if he could be mixing up one memory with another - some other incident left a deep imprint on his psyche and was similar enough that he’s recalling it now.”

The charm that belonged to Azura Summers’ boyfriend still lies on the bench, the corner of the photograph sticking out. “Mr Rimes, you didn’t happen to be in the audience at last year’s show, when the other trainer died, did you?”

“I—” Surely he must have realized that this would become a topic of contention, that someone could figure out his connection to this prior case, but Rimes appears wholly unprepared for the topic. One of his hands flits down toward his pocket. “Yes, I was in the audience, but so what?” His voice trembles as he asks. “I was just - just some other spectator.”

“No you weren’t.” Phoenix picks the charm back up and removes the picture fully from it, passing it to Athena. “Ms Azura Summers, the orca trainer who died last year, was your girlfriend.”

“H-hey! Where’d you get that charm—” There’s the reaction Phoenix wanted. Rimes doesn’t have a poker face. 

“I thought you said we weren’t going to mess with that yet,” Athena says. 

“I didn’t want you to,” Phoenix says. “I can’t get much more cursed.”

“Well, you could’ve mentioned to me that you’d—” Athena squeals and jumps backwards as Taka alights on the bench, sticking its head through the Mood Matrix. Pulling the picture close to her chest, Athena stares down the bird; it glares back, snapping its sharp little beak open and closed several times. “Wait, do you - do you want—” She slowly extends her hand, fingers curled to keep them from appearing as tempting snacks, picture offered to the hawk pinched between her thumb and fist. Taka stretches its neck out and plucks the photograph away from her, sweeping its wings wide and taking off with a gust that buffets their faces and leaves behind a few loose bits of feathery fluff.

“I’m surprised it didn’t just rip it out of your hands,” Phoenix says. 

“Must’ve been afraid he’d ruin it,” Athena says. Across the courtroom, Taka lands in front of Blackquill, holding the picture for him to examine, and then flies off to the judge. 

Rimes’ anger is easy from there: he thinks the orca killed his girlfriend. Of course he hates it. Of course he wanted to prove it to be - frame it as? - a killer. And with those loudest, most furious emotions quieted, Athena can hear that he wasn’t surprised when DePlume saw the orca finding the body in the rock. The last contradiction between Rimes’ words and feelings cleared, it’s all there: motive to hate the orca and frame her for murder, method to move the body, and a witness who they proved yesterday had been manipulated by the real killer to specifically witness the “killer” whale. And if Rimes, like he points out, doesn’t have a motive for killing Jack Shipley - well, that’s it, isn’t it? Rimes tried to kill Orla by draining the show pool, but that left room for Shipley to fall to his death. 

It’s quiet, for a moment, with Phoenix finished laying out his proposal. “Mr Rimes?” the judge prompts. “Do you have anything to say to this?”

“I wish I didn’t have to fight anyone but that orca,” Rimes says, “but I guess you’re not leaving me much choice. I’m not strong enough otherwise.” His hand returns to his pocket, but this time when he brings it back up a magatama rests in his palm, glowing faintly blue. Fingers closing around it, he brings it up to his chest. 

“Mr Rimes, wait—” Whatever he thinks he’s doing - even if he did murder Jack Shipley while trying to kill Orla - Phoenix is of the opinion that very few people deserve what the fae would put them through. Rimes isn’t one. But it’s too late, and he stands there in front of the court with light shining out between his fingers, spilling across his skin and up from under it. He flexes and his arms bulge, and his whole body with it distorts and swells so that he looks, really, nothing like the Rimes of a moment ago. His jaw and face widen; his shirt splits apart under the strain of this bodybuilder-caricature physique. If there is a murmur from the gallery whenever something interesting happens, this is a roar, and the judge, shocked like the rest of them, not even banging his gavel for order.

Blackquill recoils, but by managing to speak he’s one step ahead of the rest of them on the court floor who are struck by silence. “What the devil kind of deal did you make?” he snarls. Rimes doesn’t answer him; Blackquill’s eyes flash silver again and Taka shrieks and Phoenix is the next unfortunate prey beneath their gazes. “This entire yarn you have spun, defense, is predicated on this witness being able to manipulate the orca into acting as he wished. Answer me this, witness, before your body folds under the weight of your bad decision: can you control the orca’s actions?”

Phoenix almost misses Rimes’ answer - something about not being able to, and that Phoenix is spewing bilge, which, no, Phoenix is pretty sure he’s on the right track this time - thinking more about the way Blackquill called Rimes on the magatama. How did he get it - what did he do for it - is Blackquill concerned of what will come of that, the way Phoenix is, or is this disdain and no sympathy for a fool in over his head? It doesn’t matter, in the moment, but Phoenix is grasping for any insight at all into Blackquill’s thoughts and his own situation. There’s a lot to learn about someone else’s background based on their opinions of the fae and the like. 

The trouble is, he’s pretty sure that if he ever tried to talk to Blackquill, personally, the man would laugh him out of the detention center, and this is going to be the most insight he gets.

“Ms Buckler was the only one who knew how to issue commands to the orca, wasn’t she?” the judge asks.

“Ah,” Phoenix says. Shit. He’s got to figure out how someone else could’ve, and fast.

“How does it feel to be shown up as a lawyer by the judge?” Blackquill asks. (Pretty bad, honestly.) “Strike at me with a blade of evidence, or accept your defeat with grace, should you even know how!”

He lashes out at Phoenix with a slash of his finger, his movement no longer limited by the handcuffs. The air in the courtroom moves, pushes across a cold front, and with it, cutting through the dark that falls over Phoenix’s Sight with a silvery, icy curved blade of wind. He’s sure it isn’t solid, but it strikes him in the face, up by his temple, and still hurts. The sting that lingers is of a paper’s slice through skin, but the initial impact, the first cut, is a damn bit stronger than that. He lifts a hand and drags it through his hair there, isn’t surprised to find that some dark strands come away stuck to his skin.

There’s supposed to be reason for those handcuffs, a mundane reason and a magical reason, and yet Blackquill breaks the chain limiting him and uses magic that should be stopped by iron. Is that something to be said for the power of psychology? Magic powered by belief in it, and Blackquill perhaps tricking himself into believing that none of this can stop him. Witch, magician, fae, or something else, iron should limit him at least somewhat - unless this is him limited, and that’s an entirely new frightening thought.

Yeah, yeah, isn’t it nice that Phoenix doesn’t have any reason at all to ever be involved with Blackquill ever again after this trial is over, huh.

(Damn you, Edgeworth.)

“I’m afraid that this line of reasoning has reached a dead end,” the judge says. Rimes couldn’t frame Orla without manipulating her - how could Rimes have manipulated her? If Phoenix doesn’t have proof he at least needs some way to stall for time, some more testimony - from Sasha? If he asks Sasha to testify about Orla’s training sessions, if it was possible for someone to see or record them, if anything is written down— “Unfortunately, there seems no way for your theory to work, Mr Wright. Now—”

“Objection!”

Athena’s shout reverberates through his ears, and with that so close and so unexpected, Phoenix knows his face doesn’t put up the facade of the defense team both being on the same page. She doesn’t immediately followup with evidence or more reasoning, and he asks, “Do - do you have something to say?”

“No,” she says, staring across at Blackquill at the other bench. “But you do. You’re not done arguing - I can hear it in your heart that you’re not.” She smiles at him. When did he last say something, for her to hear? Does it not take words any longer, after the time she’s known him? Or is she just saying what she hears in her own heart, her hope for him, that the great Phoenix Wright who she admired enough to become a defense attorney won’t quit like this. “So I was speaking up for you - sometimes you need someone else to help, right?”

Someone else to speak up for him - someone else to remind him who he is. He hasn’t gotten his badge back to not fight to the end with insane and absurd suppositions. Sasha came to him for help and he won’t let her down. “Thanks, Athena,” he says, and louder calls, “Your Honor! I’m not yet finished presenting my argument!”

“Some day or another you both need to learn to give up.” Blackquill leans forward, his elbows resting on the bench. “I might prefer that to be today, now. What more can you possibly want to do? You’ve already presented a mountain of evidence and scrutinized every last piece of testimony from all of the witnesses!”

Everyone involved - DePlume, Rimes, Sasha, Crab. He could ask Sasha to testify again, buy some time to think - wait, everyone involved? Not quite. There’s a reason Sasha came to him for help, and this is batshit, this is a joke, but it saved him in a situation far more dire than this.

“No,” Phoenix says. “Not every witness. We haven’t heard from the central figure in both today and yesterday’s trials, have we?”

“Don’t tell me.” Blackquill pushes himself up straighter, the better to condescendingly glare down at the defense. Phoenix can’t help but crack a momentary grin at him. Oh, I’ll be telling you in a second.

“Wait - who have we not heard from?” the judge asks. “Prosecutor Blackquill, Mr Wright, what valuable input have you been neglecting?”

Blackquill closes his eyes. Phoenix takes a deep breath and steels himself. Nothing else for it. “The defense would like to call Orla the orca as a witness for cross-examination!”

-

“—and I hope Phoenix knows that I can’t actually understand Orla on more than a basic first-week-of-foreign-language-class level! Like ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘it’s fine’, ‘thanks’ - I could tell you who the killer was if she could tell me but I don’t know enough vocabulary to—”

“Sasha, calm down.” Phoenix slides his phone back into his pocket. “I wasn’t expecting you to. Since you and the victim were the ones who fed Orla, she shouldn’t have interacted with Rimes much, right? But if we can get some sort of reaction from her when she sees him, that could be telling.”

“Wait, would she even recognize him the way he looks now?” Athena asks. “Bold move, Boss, at any rate.”

He can’t tell if that’s sarcasm or genuine admiration. “Well, since you spoke up for me before I’d figured out a plan, I had to work out our next step on the fly.”

“You do that off your own objections, too, though,” Athena says. 

“And I just—” He stops. He also can’t tell if that one is sarcasm or admiration and he’s going to let it all go. “Just spoke with Pearls and she’s getting the telecast set up on her end. Says Orla seems to be feeling fine.”

“Thank goodness,” Sasha says. “And thank you so much - I r-eely appreciate you not giving up on Orla.”

“Of course we wouldn’t!” Athena says brightly. “We don’t give up! Wait, do you say ‘really’ like that like to mean, like, reeling in a fishing pole?”

“What? No, it’s like eels - electric, moray, you know.”

“Ooh,” Athena says.

Sasha frowns. “I had no idea how much Marlon hated Orla. Feels like an electric eel’s gotten to me now. I can’t believe that all this time he was planning on…”

Orla didn’t kill Jack Shipley. Every new thing Phoenix proves keeps coming around to that. But Rimes - Rimes said he was sure the orca killed Jack Shipley, right? Was that what he said? What were his exact words? How had he phrased it? Phoenix doesn’t remember, but Psyche-Locks hadn’t appeared, and they probably should have, because Rimes is hiding all this and more. Consistency, consistency, Phoenix thought he had this figured out. Was it screwed up because Pearl was nearby but not with him? Where was she when he talked with DePlume? Or was he not paying attention because he had no idea that Rimes might be important? Because unlike DePlume, he didn’t act blatantly suspicious, and Phoenix didn’t give him a glance with the Sight, either. Maybe he was just too trapped in his own head to notice, too busy thinking about Maya, about humans and orcas and humans and fae, to have any room left for locks to force their way in front of his eyes. 

That seems likely. He really needs to stop considering the mirror. It only misleads.

What was it that Blackquill said to Apollo, that first day in court? To stop relying on the tricks that someone else gave him? Phoenix needs to remember that, again, himself. If nothing else, it’s a reminder. He was a lawyer before he could see Psyche-Locks. He was a lawyer and figured it out when they were misleading him. 

Locks or no, they’re reaching the end of this, and Phoenix is going to make Rimes break.

“Of course he hates the orca that killed his girlfriend.” Great, as if he didn’t need more pressure, here is DePlume, strutting into the lobby like she owns the place. “And killed her right in front of him, too!”

“I - didn’t know you were here, Ms DePlume,” Athena says, as clearly unhappy that she is here as Phoenix is. 

“Of course I am! I’ve made a vow, you see.” She looks serious. Phoenix hopes it’s not any kind of magically-binding vow. “That I will learn the truth, and report on it in my next book - whatever this truth happens to be, and even if it goes against what I last wrote about this orca.”

That is - not the response Phoenix thought she’d have, not when she was so furious yesterday to have been proven wrong. “That’s really good of you, actually,” he says, immediately regretting the “actually” that his stupid brain let go through the filter and get attached to the end of his sentence.

DePlume sniffs haughtily. “Don’t patronize me, blue boy. Patronize my books if you will anything - I may be a bestselling author, but it is still difficult to maintain a living off of that alone.” And harder, no doubt, when people like Phoenix’s daughter are pirating her books. Should he feel bad?

“No, I mean, genuinely, it’s hard for anyone to realize that they’re wrong, and to face that truth head-on, too. Having been there enough myself.” And seen that many more of his friends and clients facing the same. Sasha slid to the side out of DePlume’s war path but still thinking about Rimes, that resentment he harbored and fed until a man is dead and the aquarium staff tearing themselves and each other apart.

“I’d sure like to know that truth myself,” Dr Crab says. When did he enter? Easy to miss him when DePlume takes center stage. “Now and then, too. I was in that audience, same as Rimes, and Azura died right in front of me.”

The photo of her body presents itself in Phoenix’s mind’s eye. How they said the orca killed her but the only teeth marks were on her walkie-talkie. “What happened then, exactly, if you’re willing to tell me?”

Dr Crab shakes his head but he’s already answering as he does. “It was the middle of a show. I was usually right there for them, in case something happened - to the orca, we were prepared for. But Azura fell off its back and started thrashing around in the water, not like she was trying to swim and couldn’t, but just writhing in pain. The orca was in the middle of singing but started headbutting her, several times, before she took her in her mouth and dragged her over to the side of the pool. They’d already started ushering the crowd out, but it was so loud, people screaming - Jack and I ran over to her, and we could see her holding her chest, in obvious pain, but by the time we got there…”

She was dead, and the orca the only apparent thing involved. But a pain in her chest, a sudden death, no visible marks on her body that honestly how could they think the orca did it unless there was some very delayed bruising - and yesterday what did Apollo find out? “I don’t think the orca had anything to do with her death, either,” Phoenix says. “I think probably, when Orla was headbutting her, she was trying to check on her. In the course of our investigating, we discovered that Ms Summers suffered from a heart condition - she was taking the same medication that you do, Sasha.”

“A heart condition?” Sasha yelps. “But that - she never told me!”

“Just like I’m currently finding out that you have one,” Crab says dryly. Sasha makes a small noise of affirmation. But he looks shaken, too, and seems to be chewing over some thought for several more seconds until his head snaps to attention with a revelation. “Son of a bitch! What her family said - and that you have a condition too, Sasha, of course!” 

“Uh…” Sasha turns helplessly around to face every other person in the room. Coming up with nothing, she finally asks, “Is this about that spectacular fight with her family that you had, and what does something they said have to do with me?”

“Spectacular?” Athena repeats warily.

“The hallway around Dr Crab’s lab was practically shaking,” Sasha says. “It was when they came to - to pick up Azura’s body. I couldn’t tell what anyone was saying but boy were you all mad. It’s not like, the fun kind of way you usually think when people say ‘spectacular’, but it was loud and dramatic and bombastic.”

“They were furious with me,” Dr Crab says. “They believed that were I really a friend of Azura’s, I would’ve told her to go back home and away from this aquarium and this city. Because they mentioned the orca, naturally, but then told me it often happens that shapeshifters like her who grow up isolated from human society end up developing any number of health conditions when they try to integrate with an environment that’s so human - all of our bustle and pollution and technology and metals.” He shakes his head. “Son of a bitch, I didn’t know why they were telling me it then, but they must have known. And here you are, Sasha, another selkie with a heart condition—”

“Azura was a selkie? But - but she never told me that either!” Distressed, Sasha fiddles with the whistle around her neck and doesn’t look back at Dr Crab. 

“You’re a selkie, Sasha?” Athena asks. “You didn’t tell us that! Wait what’s a selkie. Is that the one that sings you to death?”

“Siren,” Phoenix says. “Selkie is seals.”

“Well… I guess not. But - is this why we got along so well? I can’t believe this!” Sasha pushes her bangs back and leaves them spiked partway up. “Are you sure?”

“I kept her skin on hand for her in my lab for her so yes, I’m rather sure.”

“What? Her skin?” Athena echoes, eyes wide, aghast. “Ew!”

“Her sealskin, and it looked more like a fur coat than anything,” Dr Crab says irritably. “Her family wanted it back, which was the argument I had with them. They wanted to take her home, and it’s not like she and I ever discussed what she wanted to happen if…” He shakes his head again. “Hard to think about when you’re this young. But she’d left home and made this her home for a reason and she told me that and I told them that, and I thought part of her should stay here. They left with her body, and Jack and I took her sealskin and gave it back to the ocean here. And hoped that was something she would’ve wanted.”

Sasha wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “I bet it was,” she says. “And in my family, maybe she had different traditions, she said she was from Japan right?” - Dr Crab nods - “but my family has a funeral rite of separately interring our sealskins to the sea, so that there’s room in the empty skin for a new life to incarnate. So I think - I think Azura would’ve been happy with that.” She sniffles loudly. “And I knew Orla didn’t do it! And you were talking about putting her down!”

Dr Crab’s eyes dart toward DePlume, who has been strangely quiet - likely rattled to have been so wrong. “That was a lie,” he says, finally, reluctantly, but with Orla’s innocence established, with the aquarium already in trouble for the TORPEDO monitoring system - go ahead. Might as well spill more. “Jack and I were against such a thing from the start, no matter what she might’ve done.” Like Pearl said. That it wasn’t fair. Not for Orla. “That’s what the sleeping pills were for - if it came to it, we would drug her, pretend she was dead, and set her free.”

Is an orca smart enough to be malicious? Smart enough to realize how fragile humans are? Failing a concrete answer to that - and the fact that the victim talked with her doesn’t give an answer, because Kay talks to crows and they’re smart but enough to be punished for crimes? - Phoenix thinks that yes, that would be the right thing to do. 

An orca’s an orca. Not the fae, who tend toward conceptually understanding what humans think is moral but still erring on the side of “it’s only a crime if you’re caught”. Another reason that they established the rule of using the local human judicial body rule on their murders, because human investigators are more eyes to help catch your enemies for actions that are against the law, and there’s another fae tendency to not look ahead to consequences, like that one day all those investigating human eyes will be catching you for your crimes, too.

(And he’s not going to tell Kay that his professional legal opinion is that crows should not be sentenced for crimes. She’d be the one to figure out how to push it too far. Would Blackquill be willing to prosecute a murder of thieving crows, or does his love of birds extend past Taka and penguins?)

“I have one last thing that I can’t tell you,” Dr Crab says. “I made a promise to Jack, and I’m bound to it. But here’s a clue for the aquarium’s last secret - focus on the orca’s song.”

“Orla’s… song?” Phoenix repeats. Crab nods. “She only knows how to sing one song, right?” Crab nods again, and Sasha this time, does as well. “All right. That’s - okay.” Great. Nothing like building a case off of cryptic clues. 

DePlume should have been hearing this entire conversation, from selkies to faking an orca’s death, but she doesn’t act like she has. When she finally speaks, it’s like she’s frozen back at the very start. “I never even considered that the poor girl’s death could have been - an illness, a physical ailment.” She tugs her scarf away from the back of her neck and fans her skin. “I just want to know the truth,” she repeats. “Whether I may even say ‘just’ with all of this that you speak so openly of” - she still doesn’t give a hint whether she knows and believes them and is shocked that they would dare utter these things loudly, or whether she thinks they’re lunatics - “but I will tell you something that will help you. It is not in service to the truth for me to refrain from speaking of this.”

“Oh?” Even rattled as she is, she still has that certainty and confidence that made her such a formidable and more than that, frustrating, witness. What else does she know that they didn’t pry out of her, or that she didn’t happily admit in what seems to be an insatiable need to gossip?

“I told you that I was investigating the aquarium that day on behalf of a client, yes?” Phoenix has no idea if she did but nods anyway. “I was called out, specifically, that morning, to investigate the orca pool, by that animal keeper, Marlon Rimes.”

-

“I’ve tried to explain to Orla what’s going on and what she needs to do, but I don’t think she understands any of these lawyering words.”

The monitor that showed Orla yesterday, today once again sits on the floor near the witness stand, and its screen projected much larger, up into the air, for the court to easily see. Pearl stands with her hands clasped behind her back, half in view, watching Orla, who splashed up water at the edge of the pool and chirps contentedly. 

Even if she can understand pieces of what they say, what frame of reference would an orca have to understand what a court or testimony is? “Thanks for trying,” Phoenix says. 

“Ah, young lady there with the very cute orca, we’ve met before, have we not?” the judge asks. Despite being afraid of Orla yesterday, today he thinks she’s cute. Point to the defense. 

“You have,” Phoenix says. “That’s Pearl. She came with me to court a number of times.” And watched her mother get arrested for conspiracy and accomplice to murder on the second-ever day. Ah, memories. 

“It’s very good to see you’re doing well, Mr Your Honor!” Pearl says brightly. 

Taka screeches and makes a beeline for the judge’s head, settling gently, as it does, down on his scalp, but clearly conveying the message that there’s no time for small talk. “Ahem. Mr Wright. What is your plan for cross-examining this witness here?”

“I’m gonna ask her for testimony,” Phoenix says. “And I would also like to call Mr Rimes back up to the stand, to see if we can get any reaction from Orla. Pearl, do you have a way to see the courtroom proceedings on your end?”

“Uh - yes, one moment!” Whether that means she’s doing something with the video phone, or is popping open some one-way mirror of a faery ring, Phoenix doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t say, and a moment later her voice is fainter. “Orla, look here! At Mr Animal Keeper here!”

Orla whistles with much the same intonation as she was before, with no apparent acknowledgement of Rimes. Great, okay. More or less what Phoenix expected. What’s his plan? He doesn’t have a plan. If he can’t get something out of this, then Sasha will be found guilty. He needs to figure out how Rimes gave commands to Orla. He needs time to think about that, but the only way he can buy time is with this cross-examination. He’s letting his mouth run the show, stall for time, while his brain goes to work on an entirely different problem. 

His last bit of self-awareness tells him he sounds like an idiot, accepting an orca’s chirps as testimony while he tells her that her chirping isn’t really enough information and he’s going to need something more out of her, but better an idiot lawyer than a convicted client. “Excuse me, Orla, could you do the lifesaver trick for us, please? Or sing for us?”

She spurts a few drops of water up from her blowhole, like she’s snorting at him. “I guess if she’s only got a limited vocabulary, like Sasha does, then that doesn’t mean anything to her,” Athena says. “She’d associate the actions with the whistle, not the words.” And if she does know the words, then that means she doesn’t want to take orders from anyone but her trainer - either way, nothing Rimes could do. “But oh, isn’t she adorable!” 

Blackquill rolls his eyes. Phoenix is glad that Athena has just kept talking, trying to suss out what Orla is feeling. Whether she knows it or not, she’s stalling for him. 

Could Rimes have in some way overheard the whistle patterns and learned them? No, the training whistles aren’t within audible range; he couldn’t have. Could Azura have taught him some of Orla’s commands? Since she was a trainer, and knew them, and sent videos of training sessions to him—

The videos. 

Pearl and Athena both squeak and go silent as Blackquill slams his fists on the bench. “I have had enough of this farce of yours! You had better have an answer now, Wright-dono, else I will have Taka feast upon your treacherous tongue!”

He needs that tongue. “Then allow me to explain to this court exactly how it was that Orla was manipulated. Pearls—” He probably shouldn’t call her that in court. Not real professional of him. “Ms Fey.” Blackquill laughs, low and disbelieving, and to him it probably sounds like Phoenix is saying Ms Fae, which - Mia really phoned it in when she came up with a surname. She saved all her creativity for her defenses, Lana said at one point. “You have Mr Rimes’ video phone with you, yes?”

“Yep!”

Invasion of privacy here they come. They’ve got reasonable suspicion, right? “Would you look for any videos of any orca training sessions with Ms Summers and Orla? They’d be from more than a year ago. Especially if there’s any videos of the lifesaver trick.”

Azura would’ve had to use the whistle commands for Orla to do her trick. They can’t hear the whistle, but if the video could’ve picked it up and replayed it—

“Um.” Pearl’s voice is fainter. “I will try.”

He wishes she’d have a little more confidence about it. Maybe if she did it would have taken less than the very painfully long five minutes that they wait, Blackquill glaring all the while. Phoenix would swear that he doesn’t blink. “I found one,” Pearl says finally, and the world releases the breath it was holding, like they were caught in the moment before Psyche-Locks appear. “Do you want me to play it?”

“Throw the practice dummy in the pool first,” Phoenix says. 

Pearl runs around the pool, grabs the doll, and hurls it with the speed and trajectory of a fastball. It doesn’t arc into the pool and just noisily crashes into a wall somewhere off-camera, and she raises a hand to her face in surprise. 

Phoenix presses both his forefingers to the bridge of his nose. “Drop,” he amends. “Drop it in the pool.”

“She could probably bench press more than me,” Athena says, sounding awed. 

“She could probably bench press you,” Phoenix says. 

“Well yeah, given the average weight of a person it’s theoretically not hard to bench someone. The difficulty would come from, does the person you’re benching have enough core strength to hold themselves steady when you’re lifting them so they don’t flail and fall and kick you in the face on the way down.” Phoenix hopes that she’s only worked this out theoretically and not actually been kicked in the head trying to use a person as a barbell. 

A splash on-camera means Pearl finally got the dummy into the water. She leans over the side to watch it sink, and Orla looks at her, and after a few seconds Pearl acquises to something silently passed between them and grabs some fish from a bucket to feed her. “Okay, it’s sunk down to the bottom,” she says. “Now I play the video?”

“Yep.”

The first several moments, Phoenix fears nothing is going to happen. Then Orla dives, out of sight, and Pearl narrates the rest. “She’s going toward the dummy - she’s got it - here she comes - good girl, Orla! I don’t think she left any new bites in it!” She waves it above her head, for them to see. “What a smart girl! Here, I’ll get some more food for you!”

“Will you try one more for me?” Phoenix asks. He doesn’t like these questions, asking them phrased this way, but Pearl said she would help and this is part of it; this isn’t a separate deal. She pops her head back into view. “A video of her singing.”

“Of course!” And moments later Orla is squawking out her one song, a bit toneless and lacking rhythm, and still better than what Phoenix manages to do with a piano. 

“Isn’t she amazing?” Athena sighs in admiration. “You go, Orla!”

“Hmph.” Blackquill is not nearly so impressed, but there’s still something bordering on begrudging acknowledgement in the grunt. Maybe he’d just rather be seeing the penguin perform. “What a shock, Wright-dono, that you pulled this off. You’ve successfully proven the possibility that Marlon Rimes could have manipulated the orca - but that is, after all, only a possibility that you have not proven, and so it is just as likely that Sasha Buckler simply commanded the orca, using her own whistle, to perform the singing and lifesaver tricks. None of this rigamarole with the videos.”

The two tricks at the same time? Didn’t they talk about Orla not being able to do that? The sound of another orca song, but a different one, as much as there can be a difference in an orca chirping in something that’s close to a pattern, jars him away from the thought. Pearl just sent over Rimes’ videos, and Athena has one pulled up and playing. It shows Azura, the dark-haired selkie, kneeling next to the pool, bobbing her head to the vague melody that Orla began in response to her whistle.

No, the orca can’t do two tricks at the same time, and Dr Crab said to give thought to the song. Phoenix still doesn’t know what the latter is about, but the former, he can toss back at Blackquill. “Not just as likely,” he says.

Blackquill’s eyebrows disappear beneath his shaggy hair. “Do tell,” he says. “If you strike at me, best be prepared to follow through.”

“I’m getting to it.” This isn’t a sword fight with a samurai, no matter how Blackquill’s metaphors make it sound. In court, with evidence, Phoenix can go toe-to-toe with him. Meanwhile, his only combat experience is choreographed Shakespearian stage fights and those don’t count, he’s starting to think. 

He explains the issue, Blackquill heckling him every moment he stops to breathe for the fact that his theory is that Sasha can’t be the killer because the killer made Orla do something that’s impossible for her to do. “Better straighten out this theory of yours before I straighten you out.”

Phoenix opens his mouth. Several responses vie for space on the tip of his tongue, and in the time that “well, you are certainly allowed to try” and “yeah, that’s absolutely never going to happen” are fighting, his brain-to-mouth filter swoops in and stops him from saying anything. He closes his mouth. His silence probably makes Blackquill think he’s gotten the better of him this time, but, frankly, fuck him. (But not - okay, Phoenix is derailing this train of thought right out of the station. No puns, no pondering whether Blackquill would be attractive if he didn’t look like a dead-eyed corpse. He’s not Phoenix’s type anyway.)

“The orca’s song was probably faked,” he says finally. “Orla didn’t perform both at the same time - like I said, it’s not something she can do. The song was played over the speakers in the lobby by the tank, from this recording from a year ago. Ms DePlume said that the song she heard that day at the aquarium is the same from the Swashbuckler Spectacular show a year ago - but the song Orla sang for us just now, when Ms Fey played the video, is not that song. Marlon Rimes, who had these videos on his phone, would have been able to do this - play the lifesaver video to get Orla to bite the body, and broadcast the song to get Ms DePlume’s attention and show her that same scene she saw a year ago.”

“I ain’t exactly a tech guy,” Rimes says. “You saying I got my phone hooked up to those speakers? How?”

Ah. Well. How indeed? This would be a damned silly place for him to be stopped having come this far, though. “Not necessarily? You could’ve used your walkie-talkie. You’ve got one, same as Sasha and Jack Shipley, and those can also broadcast through the aquarium loudspeakers, right?”

Rimes fakes a laugh. That can’t mean anything good. “Sure can! Thing is - day a’fore DePlume was there and saw that murderin’ orca—” His tone of voice keeps dropping to something gravelly and more like a stereotypical pirate accent. It honestly wouldn’t surprise him if that was part of the magic woven into the magatama, just for the amusement of whatever fae made a deal with a pirate-themed aquarium employee. “Screwed up an’ broke my walkie-talkie while cleaning.”

“Are you fucking bullshitting me right now.”

He’s back in the basement of the Borscht Bowl Club, staring down seven long years of faceless challengers, and when he didn’t laugh off the ones that thought they could trick or intimidate him into losing the only reputation he had left, he dropped the thin pleasantries, dropped into the persona he mirrored from the rest of them, short-tempered and foul-mouthed card sharks, and gave a dead-eyed stare and asked what the hell they thought they were playing at. Usually his sudden change in demeanor startled them enough to give him time to regain his footing. 

But today the ground is still shifting and sliding beneath him. 

“You probably broke it on purpose, afterward, to be your stupid little flimsy alibi!” Athena is no less furious that he is, enough that she doesn’t point out the hypocrisy of the times he’s given her a gentle reminder that yelling at the prosecution and/or witnesses like that is not professional in the slightest. 

“I’d not done any such thing,” Rimes protests. “Dropped it after I was done helping Sasha with the cleaning.”

Athena makes quotation gestures in the air. “You ‘dropped’ it, huh? You got proof for that? That you dropped it and didn’t ‘drop’ it?” She’s really going in on this phrasing. 

“Proof?” Blackquill interrupts. “The burden of proof is on you, not this witness!”

It is, isn’t it? Fuck the burden of proof. Fuck everything about this. Rimes could’ve stolen someone else’s walkie-talkie and used it to broadcast the video. He could’ve used his own and broken it after the fact. It’s logical, every single bit, it’s common sense, and that doesn’t matter. They’re down to nitpicking a goddamn walkie-talkie because Rimes has no other way to defend himself: he had the means, the motive, the opportunity. He could be lying about anything and Phoenix wouldn’t know. Phoenix doesn’t know if Blackquill screws up his Psyche-Locks too but he probably does. “Mr Rimes,” Phoenix says, and he hears himself speaking louder than necessary to drown out the long, frustrated yell thrumming through the back of his skull. “I hope you realize a jury wouldn’t buy one second of this shit you’re spewing.”

“A jury,” Blackquill repeats, tonelessly, expressionlessly, and Phoenix almost has the naivety, for one flash of an instant, to think that this isn’t going to go somewhere that makes him want nothing more than to push the prosecution off the edge of an empty orca pool. “Perhaps this is the sort of situation you should have considered before you made a catastrophe of your own Jurist System, deciding you would rather it serve the cause of personal revenge than serious reform.” 

He could argue. It would be easy to argue. He could say that reform takes time, and the public doesn’t trust the legal system as it currently stands, and that makes them expectedly cautious about said legal system’s plans for fixing itself from the inside; and that Edgeworth’s careful, wants more test cases, wants to know how a prosecutor not so stringently fighting for truth as Gavin could sway a jury far off-course, wants to see how juries that Phoenix hasn’t dropped an amnesiac dead woman into act, wants to make sure they do this right instead of just trying to do something immediate, so that another twenty years down the line they don’t have to fix it again.

And it would be the most difficult thing in the world to argue, because he knew, the day of Drew Misham’s death - Phoenix knew if he did that, this is what would be said about him, now until the end of everything. He knew and he went for it and how can he argue when he knew, when he barely survived a vote the committee took on whether he should stay on it at all, when they didn’t have to vote on whether he should be stripped of his chair because that was an easy decision to of course make; and how can he argue when he said it himself, to Apollo, when the kid asked if there was any progress being made, that this is how he knows he’s perceived. “Like I was using the whole project for personal revenge.” How can he argue against this perception when he doesn’t regret a damn thing. 

And if he argued it wouldn’t matter at all, because Blackquill stacked the deck. He knows where to cut but doesn’t have any personal investment to care if there’s a lashing back. Phoenix could say anything and it won’t change Blackquill’s stance because Blackquill might not even believe what Blackquill is saying. He might not care what Phoenix did. He just knows where to get under his opponent’s skin, and this is one of Phoenix’s open wounds.

Somewhere up in the gallery there’s Edgeworth, Apollo, and are they sitting together with Trucy - do they not say anything because of her, or because Apollo’s still intimidated by Edgeworth, but do they exchange a glance, one that acknowledges and hates what Phoenix turned himself into? Does Edgeworth regret this now, watching the face-off between the two attorneys with blackened names who he’s trying to clear?

Phoenix says nothing, and Blackquill’s smirk widens,

And Athena is still furiously arguing with Rimes about who it is exactly who’s spewing bilge, the lawyers or the witness - Phoenix’s vote is on the witness for seeming to be trying to on-the-spot compose a diss track against Phoenix, stick to your day job, Rimes - like they’ve not even noticed the drama happening next to them. It means nothing to Athena, who barely knows about the Jurist System and Phoenix’s role in it, who certainly doesn’t know about where Phoenix stands at the intersection of the Mishams, Zak Gramarye, and Kristoph Gavin, because Athena doesn’t know any of them either. She just knows right here at this moment, Marlon Rimes is lying through his teeth, and she’s going to chew him out for it.

Is she accusing him of not even having broken his walkie-talkie in the first place? Bold strategy, probably not going to work out for her, but if she keeps talking Phoenix can stabilize himself and maybe figure out what’s actually happening while she’s stalling for time. He has to prove either when Rimes’ walkie-talkie broke or that he used someone else’s. If—

“Sure, I can prove t’ya that I broke my walkie-talkie - I’ve still got it with me - just not when—”

“Yes!” Phoenix slams his palm down on the bench. Athena jumps. “Please show that to the court!”

Taka swoops down and snatches the sword-shaped walkie-talkie from Rimes’ hand, whisking it off to the judge, the prosecution, and then, finally, landing and depositing it in front of the defense. Athena reaches tentatively for the walkie-talkie that the hawk remains perched on, gingerly trying to avoid its talons, and Taka opens its beak and lets out a horrible screech, right in Athena’s face, before flying off. “Damned bird,” Phoenix mutters, picking up the walkie-talkie and turning it over in his hands. Athena remains frozen for a moment longer, recoiled back from where Taka was. Then she leans over Phoenix’s arm to examine this latest piece of evidence with him.

The casing at the bottom, the part that constitutes the sword’s hilt, is cracked, some pieces of the plastic shattered off entirely. The backing to the battery casing is missing. Several large tooth marks arc across the gray blade part, also badly scuffed. “That’s a big bite,” Athena says. “Do you think it was Orla?”

Either her or Maya, and one of those looks way more likely for this case than the other. “Mr Rimes, this walkie-talkie does very much seem to be broken,” Phoenix says. “But I don’t believe it’s yours.”

The victim’s walkie-talkie has been missing since his death, missing in the photo of his body, and could easily have been broken in the fall. And his had the marks of Orla’s teeth in it, because it was Azura’s before he used it, Which means that Rimes’ actual walkie-talkie still could’ve been used, and this is the victim’s missing one, and the only person who had reason to steal the victim’s walkie-talkie would’ve been the killer trying his hardest to cover his trail. 

Right?

Phoenix says this. Rimes claims that he’s had some run-ins with Orla that ended with her biting him and his walkie-talkie both. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Phoenix demands.

The judge slams his gavel down. “Mr Wright! I’ve tried to be lenient on account of how long it has been since you last stood in court, but if you continue to use this sort of language I will have no choice but to penalize you!”

“Sorry. I - sorry, Your Honor.” Phoenix inhales slowly and lets all of his breath out even slower. His client is counting on him to keep a level head. Athena is counting on him to keep a level head. “Mr Rimes, it really seems remarkable to me that you, who so hated Orla and wanted to be rid of her, would never make mention of the fact that she allegedly attacked you - that seems like a worrying behavior that should have been brought to someone’s attention if it actually happened, no?”

“Enough,” Blackquill says lazily. “The witness’ litany of terrible and incomprehensible choices are not on trial here - Sasha Buckler is. Either present to me some evidence of this walkie-talkie theft you insist upon, or allow His Baldness to finally render the verdict that seals the fate of your orca trainer.”

He laughs far too hard at that for it to be anything but a ghastly pun off of Sasha’s identity. 

“Sasha’s innocent!” Rimes protests. Still, to the last, insisting on that. “Forget the orca! Let her walk the plank - just save Sasha!”

“I can’t do that, Mr Rimes.” Well - he could. That’s the thing, he could. But he’s sacrificed enough of his principles over the past years, and now that he’s here in court as a lawyer again: no more. No more of that. Sasha trusted him to get Orla found Not Guilty, and Sasha stands by that and is trusting him to stand by that while he defends her. He can’t break that trust. Fuck what anyone else thinks the truth of this case is, Phoenix is going to find the real one, and he’s going to save them both. 

“Hey, Mr Wright,” Athena says. “I - okay first I think we need to come up with our own office rap/freestyle or song or pirate theme or something so that we can—”

“Nope,” Phoenix says. “What’s the next thing?”

“I noticed something weird about the bite marks, I’m not sure that it means anything, but…” She shrugs.

“Athena, we’re at the point where we have nothing else and I will make it mean something if it doesn’t actually yet mean something. What’ve you got?”

“Ah,” she says. “Right. We’re running out of half-baked bluffs.” Ouch. She’s really punching him in the pride today. “The bite marks are different, from this walkie-talkie here to the training dummy.” She brings up a photo of the dummy to display above the walkie-talkie. "There's a tooth missing in the bite from a year ago in the walkie-talkie, but not in the dummy, and Orla's not missing any teeth, is she?"

"And you wouldn't give an orca a prosthetic tooth. Do you have anything from Ms DePlume’s book scanned in, like that picture of Azura’s body? If we look at the walkie-talkie there too—”

“On it.”

So the tooth marks are different: if there was a tooth missing from the bite marks now, on the dummy, and a full set on the walkie-talkie a year ago, that would make sense. It would mean Orla had broken a tooth over the past year. But it’s the other way around, two variations on a bite mark - and two variations on the song, too, he remembers suddenly. Dr Crab told him to think about the song. Orla only knows one, Sasha said, but the whistle command from that video a year ago now has her singing a different song than the one in the video a year ago. Two contradictions, both of them a year ago and now. Wouldn’t Sasha have said if they taught Orla a knew song and overwrote the old one? Wouldn’t that be harder than teaching her a new song with a slightly different whistle command? Wouldn’t she get confused?

Phoenix is the confused one. But this has to mean something - Dr Crab wouldn’t have pointed out the songs if it didn’t. If he takes “Orla only knows how to sing the current Swashbuckler Spectacular song, the one Athena knows” as fact, and “a year ago, the orca sang a different song, the one DePlume knows” also as fact—

—then there couldn’t be two different orcas, could there? One missing a tooth, and one not? That’s goddamn absurd, a hell of a leap he’s taking now, but it fits the facts he has to take as fact—

—and Sasha said, what feels like forever ago, but was really two days ago when they met Orla, that her name is actually Ora but she only responds to Orla. 

Because even if the aquarium was trying to pretend two orcas were one, if they were ever there in an overlapping time span, they wouldn’t both be trained to respond to the same name. It would get too confusing to refer to them by the same name.

Ora and Orla, two different orcas. 

“Shit,” he says.

“Mr Wright,” the judge warns. 

“Sorry! Sorry. Can I get a pass for just realizing something astonishing?” Something that’s going to upend half of this case, answers the remaining contradictions, and raises a thousand more questions outside of the case like “but why?” and also “but why?” 

“Was this astonishing realization of yours that I am correct and you intend to finally give up insisting on the defendant’s innocence?” Blackquill asks with a smirk.

“You’re a dick.”

Blackquill, unfazed, laughs, but Phoenix still feels a little bit better for having said it. He’s wanted to say that to most prosecutors he’s known in court at least once, and finally, he’s gone for it. “Just hit me with that penalty, Your Honor. Now, what I’ve realized is that, this entire case, we’ve been making an assumption - and why wouldn’t we, no one who works for the aquarium has said otherwise.” Because maybe they actually, physically, can’t. “But these inconsistencies we keep running into make me think - Orla we know now, and the orca at the aquarium a year ago, are not the same orca. There’s not one, but two Ora Shipleys.”

Diving right into this revelation might mean the judge forgets to issue a penalty, because Rimes is shocked, and Blackquill disbelieving, and even Athena who noticed the bite marks surprised that this is the conclusion they’ve reached - and the judge calling for order and asking how there can be two different orcas in the same breath, contributing to the disorder he’s trying to end in the same breath. Different songs, different bite marks - and when Athena pulls up videos, the Swashbuckler Spectacular aired on tv the other morning, and one of Azura’s, they can see different teeth. In the video from a year ago, the orca, as expected, has a broken tooth on the front left side. Orla has a full mouth of perfect teeth. 

“Ergo” - wait, did he really just say that, he hasn’t spoken to Edgeworth in like, a week, why’s he talking like this - “the tooth marks on this walkie-talkie cannot be from Orla, this walkie-talkie cannot be yours, and it was stolen from the victim, Jack Shipley. And the only person who would have had the opportunity to steal the walkie-talkie before the body was discovered is the culprit - is you, Marlon Rimes.”

“No!” Rimes clutches at the witness stand like it’s the only thing holding him upright, like his legs are going to give out if he doesn’t have that. “You’ve got it all wrong! It’s the orca’s fault! It’s—” He staggers. He can’t even stay upright now, doubled over the stand and clinging to it. “It’s - it’s the orca’s fault! She’s a killer!”

Phoenix remembers, again, the lack of Psyche-Locks. Rimes believes this, so strongly, that he dragged this out to its bitter end, sure that the orca killed Azura. Sure that she’s a killer, and Jack Shipley only died because he was trying to save her - might Rimes believe that’s her fault, too? Sure she deserved death, and Rimes was only trying to do what she deserved, and he wouldn’t have had to if she weren’t a killer then Jack Shipley wouldn’t have - and he’s dead and it’s her fault, right? 

(And Phoenix might be years past I did not kill Juan Corrida, can spot locks for secrets that lie beneath technical truths, but it shouldn’t surprise him that he still trips on the half-truths. It’s a fae blessing and that’s true to the fae. They’re squidgy, the locks, much like secrets and truths are. It’s like a metaphor except it’s being an actual physical issue to him. Metaphysical issue? He still hasn’t asked Pearl if she knows what the black locks mean. He’s spent enough time hung up on Kristoph.)

“She’s a - a—” Rimes slumps off the stand, sinking to the floor, leaning against its wooden bars. “Why I am still too weak to help anyone?”

That isn’t a confession yet but it’s something close, and Rimes finally done fighting, all the desperate protestations bled out of him. The judge clears his throat. “Ms Buckler,” he says. “Is Mr Wright’s claim true? Are there two orcas?”

“I, uh…” Sasha stands up from her chair, takes one step, and stops, and takes a step back toward the chair, twisting the cord of her whistle around her finger. “Well, I didn’t tell you that, Phoenix - you figured it out, so I guess I can say, yeah, there used to be two orcas at the aquarium. Ora and Orla.”

Well, shit.

“They were sisters. They were rescued by the captain when they were beached on shore” - Phoenix remembers this story, but only about Orla - “a few years back. Ora was fine, but Orla was in really bad shape and it took a long time of Dr Crab looking after her to get her back to health. And Ora didn’t want to leave her, and after they’d been here for so long, they loved the captain, they didn’t want to leave, and we kept them on at the aquarium. Ora was the one who performed in the pirate shows, since while Orla was recovering, she started learning tricks, but after - after Azura’s death a year ago, Ora was put down. The Center for Dangerous Animal Control demanded it.” She looks back down at her hands. “The captain and the doctor begged them to leave Orla alone, and then we put Orla in the pirate show, acting as Ora. But she couldn’t figure out how to sing the same song her sister did, so we had to write an entirely new one based around how she ‘sang’.”

“And why did you say nothing of there being two orcas?” Blackquill asks.

“Wouldn’t that have been an easy way to get Norma DePlume to stop coming around?” Phoenix asks. “Just tell her that there’s two orcas, and this new one is using the stage name of the old and is obviously not a killer.”

Sasha sighs. “I don’t - I don’t quite know. The captain wanted us to keep quiet about it ‘till he thought the time was right - there were only a few of us who knew about Orla, since she was never on view for the public, just a couple of us worked with her, me and Azura and the captain and Dr Crab. The captain made us, me and the doctor, swear we wouldn’t say anything. So I couldn’t say anything.” She shrugs. The magic in the swearing is obviously implied, the same way Dr Crab said he was bound and could only hint. “I think - he had to put Ora down because the CDAC wouldn’t ever get off our backs, but he knew she didn’t kill Azura and telling everyone that we had a new orca was just - admitting it? Admitting the old one killed Azura? That’s how it would’ve felt to me anyway. But the captain, he had such a presence that, some people just, even if you don’t know why they’re doing something, they’ve got such confidence and you trust them and you do what they ask because you know they’ve got reason somehow even if it’s weird? Jack was like that.”

Athena is nodding beside Phoenix and he hopes she’s not thinking of him. She probably is. 

“So Mr Rimes had no idea that there were two orcas?”

Rimes has managed to stand again, and was staring at Sasha with haunted eyes, but with attention turned back to him he slumps, his posture so collapsed that he’s again about the height he was before his transformation. “No.” His voice cracks. “How would I?”

“Was the entire reason you came to work at the Shipshape Aquarium to try and kill Orla?” Phoenix asks. 

Rimes nods. “Azura told me all the time about the other girl who worked with the orca, how much they loved that orca, and how much Azura loved this friend who was like a sister.” Sasha hastily swipes her hand across her eyes. “I couldn’t do a thing to help Azura so I thought if maybe I could make sure to protect her friend - maybe then I could live with myself. And I came here and saw Sasha trusts that orca as much as Azura did and I was so afraid—” He takes a loud, shuddering breath. “When I started bein’ sure about my plan, that next time I’d help I’d drain the pool, I was afraid I might have t’fight the orca, or pull its jaws off of someone or myself, or something and I made a deal, for strength, I thought so that this time I…”

Blackquill shakes his head. His eyes flash; maybe it’s the light and angle of his head, or maybe again they really do turn silver. “You blighted fool. And Jack Shipley discovered you as you enacted this plan, and that is why—” He tilts his head slightly to the side. “You killed him?” Frowning, he lowers his head. “Ah, of course. The note with the autopsy report. The strange bruising around the victim’s wrist that was Marlon Rimes’ handprint. Now I see - it was left during a fight with the victim.”

Rimes’ handprint, but just one, on one of the victim’s arms. Wouldn’t it make more sense to fight with two hands, that there would be some other mark? What was Rimes doing with the other hand, trying to turn the water back off, trying to grab some weapon - somehow leaving that weird single handprint on the pool ladder, that Pearl found while going wild with fingerprint powder?

“It wasn’t the orca who killed him,” Rimes says softly, like it’s a sudden final revelation even to him. “It was me. I killed him. Just give Sasha her ‘Not Guilty’ and me the death penalty. I don’t care anymore.”

Is there still a piece missing here?

“Finally accepting your defeat, I see,” Blackquill says. “Very well. You, to hell, and Your Baldness, your verdict.”

“It would seem that this very much…” The judge pauses for a moment, considering a way to describe it. “Unprecedented sequence of trials has come to a close. If there are no final objections, this court finds the defendant—”

“Wait,” Phoenix says. The courtroom goes dead, and he’s not even sure he breathes for a moment. “Not - I don’t have any objections to the verdict on Ms Buckler!” he adds hastily, assuaging the expressions of horror that appear on Sasha and Athena’s faces, and even narrow-eyes confusion on Blackquill’s. “But - but before Mr Rimes goes, I think - I think we still don’t quite have the full story yet.” And he knows how this works. If a crime is proven in the course of trying someone else, it’s that evidence that takes the new culprit to trial, that and nothing more. It’s enough to exonerate the first defendant, so it’s enough to convict the second. No further investigation needed. Rimes is confessing now; there’s all this evidence established against him. It will be open and shut, no other scenario considered, unless Phoenix does something here, now, with what he has, examines the last possible angle. 

(Or unless he takes up Rimes’ defense, which he isn’t averse to, but he might as well establish this now.)

“This new evidence the prosecution has brought still hasn’t been fully examined, and I don’t think we’ve revealed the full truth of the matter yet.”

Blackquill’s glare doesn’t lessen in the slightest. “Your client is about to be declared ‘Not Guilty’ - you have defended her and the orca both! What more can you possibly think to be doing?”

He swore that he would save both Sasha and Orla. Now, he supposes, he’s trying to save everyone. Everyone but the dead. “There’s evidence that, in the course of our investigation, we also didn’t know how it fit with anything else. Athena, can you project for the court a picture of those fingerprints Pearl found?” 

He waits a moment, gives the judge and prosecution time to examine the prints and Athena’s mock-up of how it would look to hold the ladder in that way. “This was Rimes’ handprint, grasping the ladder from above. And we also have his handprint tightly grasped around the victim’s wrist. I submit to the court the possibility that these two prints were left at the same time - that these events happened in the same time. And if Rimes, above the empty pool, were leaning out from the ladder, and holding the victim’s wrist in such a way—”

Blackquill gets it first, recoils; even his mask of condescension slips. “But that would mean that he—!”

Phoenix nods. “Yes. Marlon Rimes was trying to save the victim. This wasn’t a murder - this was an accident.”

[pinksweatergettingbetter]

warning, the following has mainly snarky (and possibly furious) opinions on Spirit of Justice. Reader discretion is advised.

Trucy, you don’t need to take sides. There’s one side. The truth. And both Apollo and Phoenix are on that side.

They’re not at the same bench but they’re on the same team. It’s gonna be ok.

-

“I’m sorry too, little lady! this is all my fault..”

Oh so trucy gets an apology, but not Apollo? cool cool whatever 

-

Trucy, if Phoenix and Apollo become bitter enemies over a property dispute then they weren’t really all that close to begin with.

-

Dhurke: invalides trucy’s feelings while simultaneously spouting more of his Manly Man shit

-

“one minute we’re trading blows, and the next, we’re having drinks together”

well if that’s his mentality i can see why he thinks its ok do be an utter fuckwad to everyone

-

“We’re simple creatures at heart! Hah-hahahaha!”

yes... men are so simple at heart... they’re just a bunch of neanderthals... thanks Dhurke, truly you are the way to the future.

-

To be honest, I am glad that this is a civil case. When I first saw the publicity I was sure they’d made Phoenix a prosecutor for no reason and I was furious.

I’m not super glad at the way things turned out but at least the bullshit counter didn’t go into the red and explode.

Phew. I’m actually sighing in relief here. Maybe I can pretend what follows is all a friendly game or something.

-

Aww; poor Judgey’s confused :(

-

...they seriously don’t need to have a falling out to be on the opposite side of a courtroom. Lawyers face each other all the time. 

They don’t have to hate each other, they just have to keep things professional, otherwise they’d cause a conflict of interest. Like... it’s not ideal but tbh it’s more a danger to their clients than each other.

-

Y’know, I’m gonna dare to be optimistic here; as much as I hate this storyline and most people in it, this is actually an interesting and character-developing scenario.

Apollo has to face off against his mentor, the guy who... well I’d say Kristoph taught him all his tricks, but Phoenix was a sort of moral guiding force, I guess. Apollo standing up and holding his own against a superior is a legitimate way to show that he’s come into his own. Plus, since it’s not framed in a negative light (or at least, it shouldn’t be) it’s more impactful than phoenix being straight up evil since that would make it easy to take him down. This is a contest between two people who simply happen to be on opposite sides of the chess board. Again, it’s a pretty legit way to show Apollo’s growth.

...that said, I just wish it wasn’t happening after zero character build up and a heaping serving of bullshit. :T

Oh well. At least they got something right.

-

it is pretty hilarious how much they’re trying to up the drama though. it’s not that deep, guys

-

I guess Atishon just doesn’t have legs 

[snerk] his shitty speeches are actually kinda funny. ...if a little cliché.

-

...he’s standing... but I'm still not ruling out that he’s legless...

-

Tbh, even though Atishon is clearly lying, the fact that Datz basically threatened the orb out of Buff does make this kind of in their favour. 

-

...Apollo, don’t overcomplicate the case. All you have to do is prove that it’s not the crystal and you can have it. 

-

Reasons Apollo would make a good rebel: He doesn’t blab his rebelness all over the place for no reason.

-

SEXY PAN UP SHOT FOR MS. SKYE

nice ankles, ms skye.

-

“Ema..?”

“Use some manners, we’re in court”

thats not the way you acted the last time you were called as his witness :/

-

whoa seriously whats with the sudden crazy 180 for Ema? Yeah, she’s grumpy, but suddenly she’s acting like Apollo’s some rude little shit off the street. Why is she upset that he’s going up against Phoenix? Why does he need to apologize? JUST BEING ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE COUTROOM DOESN’T MAKE YOU ENEMIES.

or did the SOJ team forget the lessons we learned in the trilo–– oh who am i kidding they’ve never even laid eyes on those.

-

“You’ll never get the job done with that attitude. Take it from someone who’s been there” Been where???? Been where, Ema?????? what the fuck are you talking about what is going on 

-

haha the fey statue and the urn were ‘stolen’, huh? yeah. stolen from a better game.

-

pfft. So Buff’s some Kaitou Kid type, huh?

-

y’know ive been neglecting to mention it but have you noticed how much they skimp on animation compared to DD? DD had like 20 tiny animated cutscenes, and SOJ has one lame one at the beginning of each case to set it up. I can’t believe they even slashed the animation budget.

-

has anyone noticed how unfocused 3D phoenix looks. he looks like he’s just. staring out into space.

-

i love they don’t use gendered pronouns to refer to Buff’s kid. Remember the last time they did that? Mr. Andrews......

-

“I was shocked to see the urn that came from Kurain in Kurain”

anyway quit referencing actually good games, SOJ. Back to the shame corner for you.

-

oh COME ON. How do you steal a fucking wall relief?! 

and he really couldn’t just get a fucking permit? what the fuck is this

-

“but good intentions are no get-out-of-jail-free-card”

they are a sentence-lightening card, though! either way, this is one of the things i like most about AA. No matter how good your intentions were you still dont get away with cold-blooded murder. 

OR KIDNAPPING, AURA. HAVE FUN IN JAIL YOU SHITTY EXCUSE FOR LESBIAN REPRESENTATION.

-

every single theft of an artifact can be attributed to Dr. Buff. every single one.

-

alright, so we’re back to that whole ‘missing object report’. Thing is, unless there really IS a Crystal of Ami Fey, this wouldn’t work out. Atishon has to provide evidence that he owned the item, or that it existed in the first place. If this crystal turns out to be made up I’m gonna pitch a fuckin fit.

Don’t disappoint me, SOJ.

-

“Wimperson”

ah, SOJ, with all the comedic genius of a third-grader.

...to be fair i could say the same about Larry but i like larry and AA1. and it also plays into his phrase-thingy!

-

seriously. gimme pics of the crystal or we’re gonna have some serious problems.

-

“So how do you know this item is the thing he’s looking for”

“he said so”

THATS. NOT EVIDENCE. 

-

oh judge, your oldness never ceases to be to be enjoyable 

(that wasn’t sarcasm btw i love that dumb running gag)

-

seeing phoenix scream from the opposite side of the table is very enjoyable. just because i love seeing phoenix scream but also like having that scream not mean something bad for my case. 

i get to have my cake and eat it too! <3

-

um i dont think you can put dashes in email addresses.

-

“Don’t tell me!”

“Oh, but I will anyway.”

I love Apollo so, so much.

-

so you looked far enough into this that you tried to hack his computer but you’ll accept “its mine cause i said so” as concrete proof of something??

-

“Maybe the recipient of the email was a dog lover!”

he might be on the other side with the kid gloves off but phoenix is still Phoenix “a baseball also has stitches” Wright.

-

fuck. he walks to the bench. he cant not have legs.

...but maybe........

-

what the fuck

Atishon has the same birthday as my dad

DISGUSTING

-

oh my god, seeing phoenix /sweating/ on the other side is even more surreal

-

i also love that everyones making ‘politicians are gross’ jokes willynilly but they all forget that they’re Criminal Defence Lawyers

-

“This is... Quite... a thing... you’ve said”

I'm wheezing

this is turning out to be way funnier than i expected

please SOJ I'm having fun don’t stop me now

-

i mean he has a point. if Atishon leant the item to Bluff to study that still means that Atishon owned it in the first place.

HOWEVER, WHERE THE FUCK IS THE PROOF OF THE ORIGINAL ITEM IN ANY WAY RESEMBLING WHAT WE’VE GOT HERE.

-

its so weird to see phoenix on the wrong side of the bench that i keep getting his voice wrong when i read him out loud. i keep making him sound deep and authoritative instead of... well, how he usually sounds.

-

“Well, grandchildren ARE meant to be spoiled... I mean, that’s what grandfathers are for!”

judgeyyyyyyyyy

im crying

-

ema: can i fuck off now

-

“lets get more info on the crystal”

FINALLY. thank you, athena.

-

NO, NOT ITS HISTORY, DAMNIT

PROVE THAT IT EXISTS AND YOU OWNED IT.

-

“back in the old country”

...england..?

-

pft i though his testimony said “The Hilarious History” instead of illustrious history and i was so ready

-

“he protected the spirit mediums, a minority back then, from the rest of the locals”

well thats a big fat lie because

A) Kurain village is build on mediums

B) no way the Fey clan would allow a male ruler

we could reaaaaaaaallly use some photo evidence, Atishon.

-

“One Ives Shineto”

ok what the FUCK. where the hell are all the women?! HEY. SOJ TEAM. DID YOU EVEN GLANCE AT THE  oh of course you didnt fuck meeeeeeeeee

also whats that pun

-

FFFF PHOENIX YA LIL SHIT

-

“The transformation the mediums underwent when channeling spirits frightened the locals”

i am glad to know changing your entire bone structure is as scary looking as it sounds. of course, i doubt people would be frightened for too long when they were talking to deceased loved ones.

-

i must say they did do a good job writing Atishon’s lines.

-

“The Kurain channeling technique is known to have originated from Kooraheen, and Ami was said to travel there to train”

No, Ami invented the technique, and according to your backstory, she lived there first. Can you even keep your own facts straight?

I mean, apart from all this being bullshit and i hate it.

-

i legit cant believe it took THAT LONG for phoenix to point out the fact that the handover agreement was signed under duress.

that'd be like, the first thing i pointed out. 

...ah, there it is. I knew this couldn't stay a happy little civil case for long. Here comes the murder.

Also, really Phoenix? You didn’t bring up the fact that he might have been killed any earlier too?

-

Now that theyre bringing up the pile of books, I realize how ridiculous it is that there were so many of them on the ground. Pulling out one book might dislodge one or two next to it, but not the entire shelf. For the books to have fallen like that, they would have needed to have been shoved from the other side, or for the shelf to have listed forwards. neither of those things are possible. and nobody noticed this?!

i mean the only reason i didnt think about it was because i knew this was murder from the start.

-

Man, Phoenix, with all your “with respect for the dead” talk, it sure did take you a while to bring up the fact that you knew he was murdered and the police should probably be getting on that right now.

>edit: Actually I just realized how despicable that is; keeping the fact that this was murder secret just to use it later on as a quick bargaining chip in your civil case.

Hey capcom? You can screw up the series all you like but FUCK you for making Phoenix a skeezy piece of shit on par with the likes of von Karma. Because you know who else withholds information that sensitive for such a petty reason? MANFRED VON KARMA. 

Fuck you, capcom, fuck you, fuck you, FUCK you. 

-

“Did you forget who you were up against, Mr. Justice?”

All I do is hurl baseless accusations!!

-

wow the second this turned into murder i just got tired of this case. Also, Phoenix, you better back your butt back to your seat. Being a murder case, this requires a prosecutor... something that you are not.

-

theres AN AUTOPSY REPORT. WHY ISNT THIS A SEPARATE TRIAL.  THIS SHOULD BE A SEPARATE TRIAL; THIS SHOULD BE BEING... TRIAL-ED IN ANOTHER COURTROOM. you can reference it, and use it as evidence, BUT YOU CAN’T JUST COMBINE THEM.

Damnit, Capcom, I TOLD YOU NOT TO DISAPPOINT ME.

BUT YA JUST COULDN’T HELP IT, COULD YOU.

-

...Datz is in the gallery... But he was just in jai–– fuck it whatever

-

ok now that this is a murder trial Atishon’s non-answers aren’t funny anymore, theyre ANNOYING. I WANT THIS SHIT TO BE OVER AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. YAP ME A CONTRADICTION OR I’LL CRAM YOUR BELOVED PLAQUE UP YOUR POLITICALLY INEPT ASS.

-

“Try me, o lord of plebs”

its been a long time since any meme-y type person has called someone else a pleb... please try to keep up, SOJ.

-

i love that phoenix, at the end of each statement, politely states “get the fuck on with it, asshat”

-

why the fuck did he 

fall asleep what

OOO THE JUDGE YELL 

AW YEA

-

“What did I ever do to deserve this?”

you existed in the first place, Apollo. I’m sorry.

-

No.............

I do not like that Phoenix used the phrase, “Witness, I think it’s time for you to come clean.”

You know who uses phrases like that.

Assholes.

-

“You should know I always come fully prepared, Justice!”

( buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it––)

-

...Right, so Phoenix isn’t a prosecutor but he sure as hell has been doing a lot of prosecutorial things. Calling all the witnesses, explaining the case, etc.

Oh and he and and Atishon still didn’t tell anybody that Buff was most likely murdered right off the bat so ffffffuck you capcom 

-

Fuck you, Datz. Stop laughing and fucking focus on the fact that you’ve been accused of murder and it’s kinda tough on your ol’ pal Apoll– oh wait silly me i forgot none of you give a rats ass about him. All you do is laugh and eat and sit around waiting for Sadmad to come home.

-

“Better brace yourself, son”

Hey guess what Dad warranty expires if you haven’t made or tried to make contact in 20 years so get that word out of your nasty mouth, Dhurke.

-

“Worried this might make a rift between you two...

...and that you might then leave the agency”

haha

“Hahaha. She has an active imagination”

hahahah

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahhAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHA

-

“...Nothing a little persuasion couldn’t handle.”

Capcom. If it was something douchey. I will tear you in half.

-

SEXY PAN UP SHOT FOR

robot guy

-

i remember when i used to be excited for each new case. now I'm just scared what new horrors the next will bring.

-

hang on why does the drone not have a special sound font? if it didnt disguise the operator’s voice it would be kind of obvious who they were...

-

HOLY SHIT MISSILES

SO... THE WHOLE “BOMBS IN THE COURTROOM ARE HORRIFIC THING” FROM DD IS JUST FORGOTTEN, HUH??

-

hang on.

“Capitalist pig; I’ll turn you into pork stroganoff”

is “Sarge” legit Russian, then? That explains the “Komandir” thing. Shit, I have to change my voice.

-

ok so Sarge is written with an American Sargent phonetic accent, but uses Russian rankings and seems to be communist. What am I missing???

-

“I guess he does dress like he’s in the military...”

hes a paratrooper!!! why dont you know that? i thought you grew up with him.

-

“That’s true. Papa didn’t keep our house locked up.”

...the... archeologist... with a house full of priceless treasures... didn’t lock his fucking doors.

hey congrats for trusting the mediums and all but guess what? thats irresponsible as fuck and incredibly stupid for a supposed thief so I'm kinda surprised it took you this long to be discovered/bumped off.

-

those have got to be nerf bullets cause firing a GUN in court is just fucking ridiculous. like too far for Ace Attorney. Melee weapons, ok. Long range firearms? No.

...Though... Note to self... Next time, when creating parody prosecutor, you now have legit grounds to just give him a fucking gun........

-

“Sorry, but I’m afraid lawyers are missile-proof.”

Note to self. Upgrade gag prosecutor to missile launcher.

-

ooh, i see this drone is in the same vein as the Assassin’s Radio.

-

“Courtroom warriors don’t use guns or missiles, because evidence is our weapon of choice!”

Ahah! THATS why prosecutors are so violent. They never have any evidence to back up their assertions so they just fuckin ASSAULT people.

-

i... had a little chuckle at ‘truth bomb’

-

“What’s with him and Siberia of all places?”

Well context wise it seems he's some kind of... Defected-to-communist American?

-

Huh. Athena’s powers must be based purely on sound waves then. Interesting. 

Anyway, it’s mood matrix time! Hooray!!! I’ve warmed a lot to the Mood Matrix to be honest. I like the glowy lights.

-

I’m gonna make a guess right now that something was on fire. Cause thats some PTSD shit right there.

-

pfft the gallery was so on board with their new judge overlord. Also thank goodness this is Ace Attorney and this shit is allowed to fly, cause you’d get your ass handed to you if you tried this in real court, pal.

-

Um, I wouldn’t dig any deeper if sarge is still in such a state. It’s not... safe. Either that or you best hope that thing’s bottomless magazine has run out. Plus, I love that whoever’s watching over the actual Sarge in the Lobby hasn’t tried to stop them when they noticed them SCREAMING AND PRESSING THE ‘FIRE’ BUTTON REPEATEDLY.

Or they’ve left Sarge unattended and the Dark Age of the law isn't over because it was an omnipresent thing to begin with...

-

its ok, game. contrary to what you think, you did write Sarge’s backstory in a memorable enough way for me to remember it up until now.

-

Huh. 

HUH.

So... the person involved in writing Ace Attorney Investigations... Has written a sequence in which we must burn evidence to prove a point, huh?

:T

-

DONT YOU HINT AT ME, GAME

-

that solemn moment of reflection doesn’t include Phoenix cause he’s over behind his desk bawling his eyes out

“I’LL BE YOUR NEW PAPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

-

actually Athena’s got a point. Her tragic backstory is much more similar to Sarge’s than Apollo’s. She can properly relate to losing one’s last family member in a horrific way.

-

S––

Well, considering her age, Cutesie Pan-up shot for Armie.

-

Apollo’s having serious Robin Newman flashbacks right about now

-

ahhhhhhhhhh. her mom was Russian. It all makes sense. Tbh just for now, forgetting everything else, this kind of does feel like an old case. I’m at peace... for now.

-

i guess it’s less of an orb and more of some kind of lantern then. Cause you can’t really burn a crystal

unless its

whitcrystal

hahah

hahahahahahahhaha

-

so far I'm ranking the cases from best to worst: Magical, This part of Revolution, Foreign, Rite and Storyteller. 

-

sgsjgsjsjjs athena’s INTENSE LOOK OF HUNGER as Apollo burns the orb

“I wanna see me some sweet mama goddess”

-

damn shit thats her face

thats uh

o

ohhhh

oh i see. I was wondering what the ‘great power’ the orb could bestow upon people was, and now I realize that since it depicts her face, if someone knows her name, they could channel her. And since she's basically an actual goddess that would bestow some serious power.

not bad, not bad at all.

i know i highly dislike Kooraheen but i legit feel kinda blessed

-

“The issue is crystal clear”

*seals phoenix’s fate with a fucking pun*

-

dont keep saying “did we just win” before the verdict is handed down, you'll jinx it.

-

oh hey, blackmail. its like a perfect reenactment of Capcom getting Phoenix to sign onto this sequel.

-

Phoenix: According to the legend, once the founder returned... She would bestow spiritual power onto the person who solved the riddle.

Apollo: ...Y-youre kidding, right?!

[Apollo looks flummoxed, the gallery whispers. We cut back to Phoenix’s smirk, and then––”

???: Phoenix... Just give it up.

[Phoenix screams in shock. We pan back to Apollo......... Who now has D-Cup breasts and a very familiar face.]

/...i wish.

-

legit tho i cant believe he's trying to pull this. I'm cackling

this is the lawyeriest lawyer ploy ive ever seen

-

“What’s gotten into him?”

bad writing.

-

sdsgsdhjafhgj EVEN THE JUDGE IS CALLING BULLSHIT IM CRYI

-

(sigh) i guess we’re really gonna have to finish this, aren’t we. oh well. on we go! let’s forge ahead!

-

y’know i just remembered that Pearl appeared like, once in this. Was that her only part? I guess she just existed to remind us that Kurain village used to have girls in it.

-

noooooooo fuuuuuuuuuuck

i really hope the contradiction doesn’t require pressing because i aint sitting thru this fuck’s antics again.

-

it has rounded corners.

and its huge.

-

phoenix and apollo’s objections are too similar, i can never tell who’s screaming.

-

“There haven't been many murders there, I take it”

well........ not “many”

-

i love that Atishon pledges to banish murdeer from Kurain village and Apollo is all “yea good luck with that” like Murder is inevitable, even in a tiny village like Kurain.

Thats. kinda terrifying.

...though considering the way Kurain is...

-

i cant tell phoenix and apollo’s voices apart (sigh)

i never know whose objecting 

-

Phoenix: my client couldn't have viewed the murder directly from where he said he was, but the fact remains that he had inside knowledge of said crime!

...phoenix, you’re just trying to help apollo along, right? you didnt seriously believe that that sounded positive to your case, instead of Shady as Fuck, right??

-

“You talk big, Mr. Justice, but do you have what it takes?”

he just finished telling Phoenix he was about to put what Phoenix taught him into practice. Phoenix should be swallowing a lump in his throat and trying not to cry of pride right now.

-

“that suitcase could be a weapon anyone could use!”

yeah... yeah! even someone in a wheelchair!! oh wait wrong case.

..........but we still have someone in a wheelchair

-

a 3D crimscene view

haven't seen that shit since AAAJ

-

‘THAT SHITSTAIN ON THE BOOK PROVES HE WAS HAVIN THE COFFEE SQUIRTS, CASE CLOSED BOYS”

sorry i just felt like being vulgar

-

“and there it is, the final excuse cornered killers are so fond of”

holy shit

i love apollo

-

phoenix shut up please, just shut up

let it end

let me rest

-

oh wait

ah here we go.

-

“hes a bright young politician with a future ahead of him, its in our nations best interests to avoid burdening him with the taint of scandal”

hey, uh Enshiro

ill never forgive you for putting those words in Phoenix Wright’s mouth

-

“Lawyer! Do something! Or a bad thing will happen to ‘her’!”

no? nobody else heard that incredibly obvious threat? nobodys gonna

“whats he talking about? well, i can ponder that later. for now...”

FUCK

YOU

DO YOU HAVE A BRAIN THAT IS CONNECTED TO YOUR FUCKING EARS?!

HOW THICK HEADED DO YOU HAVE TO FFUCKING BE TO NOT RECOGNIZE A GODDAMN THREAT WHEN YOU HEAR ONE YOU 

YOU

YOU PUTRID PICKLED RED PEPPER?!?!??!?!

-

Athena: oh yeah i also heard Atishon making blatant threats at Phoenix but meh, phoenix made me pinky swear not to tell. 

I’m not shitting a lung in fury, I’m just getting rid of an organ i dont need through the nearest available passage. I’m perfectly calm and not cursing this game, Eshiro and his entire team to the pits of their own stupid made up hell.

-

“I had no idea. This must’ve been excruciating for him.”

i wanted to write a sarcastic jingle but i had trouble coming up with rhymes, so the blunt bottom line is:

when you’re not good at writing, simply steal clever and impactful plots from previous iterations so that you’ll seem clever and exciting

i mean

nobody even remembers Farewell my Turnabout anymore, right????

-

what the fuck is his deal with being king

-

OH SHUT UP DURKE 

GO FUCK YOURSELF

think youre gonna steal Franziska and Mia’s thunder????????????? no

you aren’t a fucking fraction of an inch as cool as either of them.

-

“he’s saved my neck so many times”

w

when

-

“where there’s a will, there’s a way”

how about where theres a whip, theres a better game?

-

“wait................... maybe we can summon the founder now that we can see her face??”

aww. you got there in the end, didnt you apollo.

-

...that doesnt automatically spare Maya’s life. Pearl is also a spirit medium. And i’m fairly certain there are other–– oh wait SOJ retconned that neverMIND

anyway, Atishon could still bump Maya off and then force Pearl to channel Mamma Kooraheen

-

OH MY GOD HE JUST BROUGHT UP PEARL

WHY PEOPLE ARE SO STUPID 

-

WIMPERSON BROUGHT UP PEARL

THE IDIOT VILLAIN BROUGHT UP THE FLAW IN YOUR BRILLIANT PLAN 

GSEGFISGUILSGIULSGUI;SRHG

-

“pearl wouldn't help you if anything happened to maya”

um. you morons think he’d politely ask her to help??? he's already kidnapped someone and threatened their death?? he and his founder aren't above torture or blackmail????????????

you FUCKING MORONS

-

why even bother resigning? just do what you did before and let him go to jail.

-

...this’d better just be a lead up to his breakdown animation 

-

YOU COCKSUCKING FUCKSTAINS JUST END IT ALREADY

END IT END IT END IT EDN TI EDNEI HDFI HSRLG SIHFLIHIR HF;LIVHLSIRHIGHISRHOVGLORIH’WI’HSGOI’WSGZIHSI

-

“if only you'd been smart enough to kill the girl, too...”

wow

-

...what the fuck

well that was... interesting.

-

i cant even celebrate Phoenix congratulating Apollo, I'm just so tired

there are like 85 sarcastic remarks i could make but I'm just so exhausted 

-

yay we got the orb

dootdootdoot dootdootdoot

-

even the judge doesnt want to have anything more to do with this.

im right there with ya judgey

-

“All I can say is, thats my boy!”

NO, YOU DONT GET TO CLAIM PARENTAL PRIDE OF THIS KID

HES NOT YOUR BOY

YOU BARELY RAISED HIM

GO HOME AND DO YOUR SHITTY COUP

-

“Still, its kinda nice to be appreciated”

if only you actually were, Apollo

-

yeah, thought so... ill bet they dont even channel her. cop out.

���tsk, thats no fun” indeed, trucy

-

i love how nobodys like “OK WHERE’S MAYA??? IS SHE OK???”

its fine her whereabouts are unknown and the last info on her was just that her life was in danger

pfffff

-

its alright, Armie has a place at the WAO 

-

"i knew if i admitted i could walk, id have to leave the house”

uh honey newsflash: you can leave the house in a wheelchair too. I'm pretty sure your dad would let you stay inside anyway

-

christ how fucking corny can you get. I CAN WALK AGAIN. why dont we just have Tiny Tim in here throwing away his crutch and dancing a fucking jig

-

see, there we are. Maya’s still in danger you fuck wits.

-

and part one is over, folks! i am pooped. and furious.

till next time.