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watermelonsloth · 4 months

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naruto was the hokage but shikamaru was the one running konoha all the time, so it was like naruto wasn't really the hokage but the face. he was there to fight and play the hero but never to run anyone. he would just say “put the police at my house on watch” but nothing else (he's the ninja with the best sensory abilities in the world but the poor guy couldn't handle it).

a hokage needs to be someone outside to protect the village like the trump card. no one chooses a weak hokage no matter how good a leader he may be, he needs to have some defensive skills. that's why they even have two assistants/advisors. for naruto it was shikamaru the main one and then shizune who lived for two reigns, but shizune was removed to put her as sakura's assistant instead.

a hokage needs to be a konoha shinobi and needs to go through all ninja stages genin (beginner), chunin (team leaders above average ninja) and jonin (military large scale leaders and elite ninja). naruto left, he's good a talk-no-jutsu and he wanted to surpass the other kage and be acknowledged and he did.

shikamaru, sakura, rock lee, neji (rip), temari and hanabi, the main konoha jonin have these skills. team ebisu too but they're frauds who are very weak.

shikamaru made it to jonin which means he's cut out for military level leadership, so hundreds and thousands of people. he is made to lead others to victory, to save people if his friends help him with their combat capabilities. that is why he is an excellent advisor, he relies on others while he's the mastermind.

idk if you read boruto but having a weak hokage is the reason why konoha is doing so extremely bad right now. shikamaru is an amazing leader, the best in konoha, but he is physically weak and in real combat he is useless unless he already knows his enemy's abilities and has some good teammates to help him. he should have stayed as advisor and have the hokage be kakashi again or better sakura, who has the most powerful defensive ability in the world with katsuyu (the village will be destroyed pain level).

sasuke is a good choice. he has been a good leader of taka, he's the strongest shinobi in the world next to naruto and he's also leader material but only in battle. sasuke doesn't have the patience to talk to daimyo or do business, inaugurate a building, take pictures, etc. he fights for others but he is not cut out to lead an evacuation without jumping right into the action. he's not cut out for a chair either, neither were naruto or kakashi for that matter (kakashi always begged to leave his office). they're men of action.

he would be great if he also wasn't too haunted by his previous ideals of what hokage meant and moved forward (kishimoto's sasuke would move on) but he's also the kind of man that wouldn't do it alone unless it's with naruto or his teammates, like he does now as shadow hokage.

and while sakura is also a woman of action, she's more cut out to be hokage. not just because her two masters are hokage, but also because her training and her lifestyle are more suited for combat and office duties. she's used to working in a hospital since she finished her training with tsunade and was already vaunted as the top 3 as a teenager, to handling tsunade's paperwork while she was hokage, to being present in the office when important matters had to be discussed and giving her opinion, she founded her own mental health clinic so she knows how to handle for the public, etc.

she also made it to jonin, the only k12 with shikamaru and rock lee, which contrary to her chunin comrades who lead small teams of 4 to 5 shinobi, the three are military leaders. sakura is one of 4 (counting temari) who can lead and protect a village. they're large scale leaders and sakura was already aiding shizune handle the several injured in her camp, and when she was promoted she was already leading teams of medics she chose on her own. she's currently the head of a whole department and a hospital full of people. she's leading a mini konoha inside the walls of the hospital, inside her office but also acting on her duties herself.

also, kishimoto said of team 7 sakura would be the best instructor.

I’m gonna assume that this is a response to my post about Naruto not being a good leader and that you sent this as an ask because you wanted a response of some kind. If not, feel free to ignore this.

Here are my ramblings about the Hokage and what I think makes a good one.

Just to make my thought process easier to understand, I’m gonna do a quick rundown of what I interpret the responsibilities of the Hokage to be. (Keep in mind, I’m taking this from the Naruto manga, a little from Boruto, and nothing from the novels.) Because I’m American and this is the easiest way for me to wrap my head around how the village works, I think of the Hokage as being a mix of the shogun from when Japan had shogunates and the president. So, basically: they have full or mostly full control of the military, they (theoretically) answer to the daimyo, they don’t make or pass laws but they play a large role in enforcing them, they aren’t diplomats but they are expected to maintain relations and support major political alliances, they are public figures both to represent Konoha/the Land of Fire and to act as deterrents to war (and thus can’t be pushovers in skill or personality), they decide how dissenters are dealt with, they’re responsible for maintaining national security, they command forces during war time, they stay in the village to protect it against threat, etc. etc. etc.

TL;DR A good Hokage is someone who’s good at politics, a skilled military commander, and isn’t someone people want to fuck with.

For the most part, the Hokage fit this well.

Hashirama is a charismatic leader who was commanding the Senju clan for who knows how long before building the village, and he’s so strong that he can get away with his goofball antics. Plus, we know from his fight against Madara at the Valley of the End that he is not a pushover, knows when it’s time to get serious, and is absolutely not afraid to be ruthless.

Tobirama is Tobirama. He’s far from being a pushover, seems like a Lyndon-Johnson-esque political leader who’s willing to step on a few toes and use intimidation if he deems it necessary, has about as much experience as a shinobi as Hashirama and likely acted as a general during the warring states era, and even if he isn’t as strong as his brother, he’s still smart enough and has enough variety in his skillset that most shinobi aren’t gonna want to fight him.

Hiruzen is liked by the people of Konoha (and probably the daimyo) and is strong enough to protect the village in case of an emergency. However, it also seems like he isn’t a good leader and doesn’t bring the intimidation factor a Hokage should (at least from what we’ve seen, this could’ve been different when he was in his prime). I think he got away with lacking in those areas for three reasons: 1. Konoha had many jounin/rising shinobi who were more competent leaders than him (the three sannin, Sakumo, Minato, Fugaku, Shikaku, etc.) who could cover for his failings on the field. 2. Hiruzen was following Hashirama and Tobirama (two stronger and much more intimidating Hokage), so villages would’ve been hesitant about messing with Konoha even if Hiruzen wasn’t a walking deterrent like they were. 3. Danzo covered his weaknesses (say what you want about him, but Danzo was the head of anbu, knew how to get what he wanted, and had enough of a presence that even Tsunade didn’t want to get in his way too much).

I think I’ve made my point enough that I don’t need to get into Minato and Tsunade, so let’s get back on topic and talk about the characters you brought up.

I’ve already mentioned that I don’t think Naruto would make a good Hokage. He’s definitely strong enough that defending the village/intimidating other nations wouldn’t be a problem and with some more maturing I can see him being able to act as a political figure, but I’ve already said that he isn’t much of a leader and I doubt he’ll ever not get restless being cooped up in the village doing the day-to-day work.

When it comes to Sasuke, I think that he could be Hokage since he meets all of the requirements, but he wouldn’t be the best because of his personality. I think he could be a reasonably good public figure and handle the more tedious parts of being Hokage fine, if he thought they were important. If he thought they were necessary or would have a positive impact, he could do all of those things fine; but he probably wouldn’t bother with them at all if he didn’t see the point. There’s also a problem with what he would find important because, like Naruto, he tends to treat important matters as personal responsibilities. That’s fine if he’s off wandering the world alone or if he’s on a small team, but that doesn’t work if he’s supposed to be running an entire system’s worth of people.

Shikamaru and Sakura would make bad candidates for similar reasons. Yes, they both meet certain requirements and I can see why people think they’d work—both can be very charismatic when they need to be and they take charge when the situation calls for it or they’re personally motivated to, Shikamaru is probably the best strategist in the series, and Sakura has the strength and skills to protect the village in case of emergency—but people also tend to overestimate how much charge they actually take. Shikamaru only acts as a leader when he’s ordered to and when Asuma died; Sakura only acts as a leader when nobody else can or will. They also both tend to abandon those leadership positions as soon as someone they think is more qualified steps up to the plate. Basically, they’re both too much of pushovers to act as Hokage (hence why I think they work much better as enforcers or advisors). If either were to be Hokage, it would have to be a Hiruzen situation where they have someone right next to them to cover their blind spots.

(Also, I’m not sure why you brought up Kishimoto saying that Sakura would be the best teacher of team seven because that’s a fundamentally different career path.)

As for Kakashi, I’d actually say that he makes a damn good Hokage. He has years of experience working closely with previous Hokage and leading different teams, he has the notoriety to act as a deterrent, he has the skill to protect the village, he knows how to get (very important) people to listen to him, he knows when and how to make difficult decisions, he takes charge at a moments notice, he maintains self control and levelheadedness under pressure, he asks for second opinions and knows when he can/should rely on others, he is stubborn in his beliefs but he still knows how to compromise, and he’s incredibly smart. He knocks it out of the park in all categories, even personality. If I had to choose someone to be Hokage in Naruto’s place, it would be Kakashi. The main issue with him being Hokage is that he doesn’t want to be the Hokage.

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wardencommanderrodimiss · 5 years

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Witches, Chapter 18: I hope you are enjoying these next few casefic-intensive chapters because once we are done with this orca case we are not ever spending this much time on investigations ever again. no, not even for the plot relevant ones. I am only half joking.

anyway, with the holidays over, time for regular updates again.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

----

Pearl wants to come with Phoenix and Athena to the aquarium to help investigate, rather than stay with Trucy (and Apollo) at the office. It only surprises Phoenix a little - Pearl seems like she’s taken a liking to Athena, and definitely to the aquarium critters.

And she and Trucy can’t possibly have more to talk about, can they? They were awake nearly the whole night talking, filling in the recent years that had passed without seeing each other. Every time he caught a bit of conversation, it was Trucy relaying the story of the cases when she stood as co-counsel to Apollo, of chasing down Tenma Taro and digging up Thalassa’s mitamah (with Apollo), of simply hanging out with Jinxie, with Vera, with Apollo. Apollo, Apollo, the ever-constant thread through the past year, and when he saw Pearl’s face she was concentrating intently, one hand closed around her own wrist. She’d figured something out, surely, made connection between the golden bangle on Apollo’s wrist and golden magic on Trucy’s that marks every Gramarye he’s ever met. But she said nothing, just waved at Phoenix when he told them he was going to bed.

And then two hours later he saw them again to tell them to turn down the music, because Trucy was introducing Pearl to the Gavinners’ backlog and had gradually been kicking the volume up to see what she could get away with without waking Phoenix.

Teenagers.

This afternoon, he’ll be saddled with Pearl and a different particular exuberant and loud teenager, and Athena is excitedly encouraging Pearl that of course it’ll be great and helpful to have her along, and Pearl says that she doesn’t really know what she can do, besides coaxing Rifle close, and won’t she just get in the way—?

“I’ve got an idea of what you can do!” Trucy scrambles away from one of her magic-prop shelves, something tucked away behind her back. “You need to check out the blood stains at the bottom of the orca pool to make sure that the murder really happened there, right? And maybe check for more blood to see if the murder could’ve happened somewhere else that doesn’t pin the blame on Ms Buckler! I have a solution” - she giggles and Apollo rolls his eyes - “for that!” She shoves a bottle of Luminol, and several pairs of the accompanying pink-tinted glasses, at Pearl. “Here you go! One forensics kit!”

Pearl gingerly accepts the bottle, holding it like it’s either fragile or dangerous. “And don’t forget the most important part of forensics!” Trucy’s snickering increases in volume. Apollo groans. “White powder!”

“Huh?” Athena asks, as Pearl accepts the fingerprinting powder and Apollo stifles unwilling laughter in his hand, the kind of laughter when a joke is funny but the listener is so annoyed with the joke that they don’t want to laugh. Phoenix has no idea why they are both acting like this over fingerprinting powder.

“White powder,” Trucy repeats, grinning devilishly. “Guaranteed pick-me-up for even the grumpiest detectives!”

Apollo groans. “Really, Trucy?”

Athena turns to Phoenix. “Er, Boss…?”

“Oh, fingerprinting powder,” he says. “Good idea, Trucy. Maybe that’ll help us figure out who was on scene.”

“Oh, that’s - ooh.” Athena nods, rubs the side of her neck, and looks strangely relieved. “Oh that’s what that is.”

“Great news, Apollo!” Trucy, grinning, leans toward him, and he gives her shoulder a shove to hold her back away. “You’re now not the only one who’s thought that Daddy and Ema do cocaine!”

“I never thought that!” Apollo yells. His voice ringing through the office drowns out the sound of the single Psyche-Lock that clicks into place.

“What?” Phoenix asks.

Trucy is still grinning and Apollo places his free hand over her face. His own face is turning red, red as his suit, red as the blessing marked on his skin that Phoenix sometimes Sees. “You just - you just told us to go get some white powder from the office and give it to her! And you didn’t say what it was and we couldn’t tell what it was—”

The lock shatters and a wheeze works its way up from Phoenix’s lungs. “You thought that I - I described it as ‘white powder’ because I didn’t expect either of you to know what fingerprinting powder looked like!”

“You could’ve told us what it was and what it looked like!”

Trucy wrenches herself free from her brother and tumbles over the back of the couch, laughing loudly like this is the funniest thing in the world. And okay yeah, Apollo’s mortified expression and color is pretty funny. “Yeah,” Phoenix says. “I guess I probably could’ve told you what it was.”

He’s not gonna regret that he didn’t tell either of them, though.

“Hey, Polly, where are you going?” Trucy calls. Phoenix takes the Luminol glasses from her.

Apollo throws his hands in the air, stalking off toward the back room. “I’m going to go hide in the kitchen and hope the door disappears so that no one can follow me! Mr Wright, let me know if there’s anything you need help with for the case.”

“Sure thing.” It’s nice of him to offer to help, even when he’s being reminded of all the shit that Phoenix has said to him and put him through. He’s a good kid.

“Wait, the - oh, yeah, you said we have a magic kitchen yesterday, didn’t you?” Athena frowns, watching Apollo leave. “How does that work?”

“Well,” Phoenix says, “the first part of it is that you stop actually questioning it.”

Magic works under certainty, after all.

Pearl wanders off almost immediately after they arrive at the aquarium, saying she wants to find Rifle and start “forensicking” everywhere she can. “Don’t use it all up before we get to the crime scene!” Phoenix warns, and she turns a very serious stare on him and assures him that under no circumstances will she run out of Luminol. He doesn’t question further, finds it pretty safe to assume that it will be magically regenerating because she thinks it should and needs it to. “Oh, and if you find Mr Rimes, give me a call and let me know where you are. I think we should probably question him again too.”

Athena watches her disappear through the blue gloom of the Aqua Tunnel. “I didn’t get the sense that she had a cell phone?”

“Yeah, she doesn’t.”

“So - you want her to borrow Mr Rimes’ phone or something?”

Fulbright at the orca pool, which is half-drained while Orla whistles sadly from far below, doesn’t let them wander around and trip up the police investigation. But he is amenable to answering some questions and takes all of Athena’s pointed, furious “Objections!” well in stride. She’s still pissed at him for arresting Sasha and Phoenix wonders, were Blackquill a normal prosecutor who was able to come investigate crime scenes himself, were he here now, how much would Athena be yelling at him? Her reaction to being told it was him on the case, yesterday, made Phoenix think she was afraid of him, but that wasn’t what she showed in court today. She acted more angry than afraid.

Maybe that’s just what she does with fear: turns it into anger.

Fulbright explains to them that Sasha confirmed earlier in questioning that she was in the orca pool room at that time, doing some cleaning, the last person to use a key card until the body was found. And the last time the victim was seen was with her, arguing with her. Athena flails about with a few more distinctly unlawyerly objections and then falls sadly quiet, lets Phoenix take over. Before he ushers them out, the detective gives them some prescription medication of Sasha’s to pass along to her. Phoenix accepts it while feeling that this is horribly intrusive of them, important as it probably is for Sasha to get these. Because, sure, they said to Fulbright that they intend to represent Sasha, but he still actually has no idea whether she wants them as her lawyers. His defense got her arrested, after all.

At the Pub O’ Danger, they find the laboratory that DePlume was loitering around unlocked, and meet the aquarium’s veterinarian, Dr Crab. There’s a certain kinship Phoenix feels with the man - he might be incredibly, uh, crabby, but he’s fallen asleep in his mess of a workspace and that is intensely relatable. He also has a penguin chick living in his hair, harassing him, like an antagonistic version of Blackquill and Taka. (As far as office environments go, better a fae ghost harassing him than a penguin, Phoenix will say.) Dr Crab wasn’t around on the day of the murder - he was over doing some business at the Supermarine Aquarium, which of course Athena knows a lot about, across the city - but the night prior he was the one who witnessed Sasha and Shipley arguing. He sends them off with that information and tells them if they find Rifle to send her back to the lab.

Not that Phoenix knows how to direct a penguin to do something, but the point is moot when they run into DePlume first, who’s furious at them for blowing up her testimony in court today. Perks of being the boss - Athena wants a fight, so she can handle the questioning, and Phoenix can duck out of the line of fire, DePlume’s ire. Her line of ire.

Among her other various conspiracies, they learn from her that Jack Shipley’s death came on the one-year anniversary of the orca trainer’s death, which now that they know Shipley wasn’t killed by the orca, can’t be a coincidence, can it? She also tells them that the orca song she heard, when she saw the body, is the old orca song from the show last year, which is not the song in the show Athena knows. It also can’t be the song Orla knows how to sing because Sasha said she knows exactly one song - the one Athena knows - and that still makes that orca a better musician than Phoenix.

There is a lot afoot at this aquarium, but how it all pieces together is anyone’s game.

On return to the orca pool, they find Pearl sitting on the edge, her feet dangling over the 65-foot drop, her sandals barely held on her toes, and her expression primly unconcerned with the prospect of falling. “The ghostly detective said that they’re done investigating here and we could look around if we wanted,” she says, springing quickly and precariously to her feet, balanced right on the edge, and Phoenix’s heart seizes up.

He’d also be a little more worried about her epithet for Fulbright if he hadn’t been sure to assess the detective himself yesterday, which he could do then because unlike in court in April, Blackquill wasn’t around spinning everything out of control. “Because of his white clothes?” Phoenix asks, and Pearl nods.

“He is bright, isn’t he,” she says. “But he’s also not very bright at all.”

Phoenix fails to swallow all his laughter and it emerges from his nose as a snort.

“With Fulbright gone we can do anything!” Athena says, with blatant disregard to the police officers still guarding the scene. Phoenix makes a slashing motion across his throat; they’re going to need help, someone operating the hoist, to get down into the orca pool. (The pool that he really, really wishes wasn’t so deep.)

They all clamber onto the ladder platform. It makes total sense that there’s a way to raise and lower people to the bottom - they have to clean the tank, after all - and Phoenix further wishes he had no idea of it because imagining the moving, before they actually even start moving, is making him sick. He squeezes his eyes shut and grips the railing for dear life. One of the girls pats him on the arm. The whole platform shudders and screeches when it halts. “Mr Nick! It’s time to start forensicking! Do we use the Luminol here?”

“Right.” Phoenix pries his eyes open and regrets it when he sees Pearl leaning half off of their little platform, over the side of the orca pool that doesn’t have any water - there’s a little divider put up in the center, and Orla floating and fweeting sadly on one side where the water is about fifteen feet deep. Pearl begins spraying the Luminol with gusto: over the floor on the drained side, over the props on the drained side, over the water side, over—

“Oops! I just got some on Orla…”

Oh, he’d thought that was on purpose. “Nothing’s happening,” Athena says, peering over the railing, and Phoenix wants to grab her by her jacket collar and pull her back, even though this fall is a survivable one. They might have proven Orla’s innocence, but the idea of Athena falling in the water with her still makes him incredibly nervous.

“We need these special glasses to see the chemical reaction,” Phoenix explains. “Here.” He offers a pair to each of them.

Pearl happily accepts, but Athena squints over them and turns them about in her hands. “That’s quite a fashion statement, huh? Doesn’t really go with…” She holds them up against her jacket and then slips them on.

They don’t go with anything, which is why no one but Ema uses them as a permanent wardrobe piece. But they do their job, showing a blue reaction over the skull rock, which must’ve been the point of impact, and on Orla herself, which is strange because while she was bleeding, it was under her hat, and she’s still wearing that hat. And if she was bleeding underwater, the blood should’ve just floated up through the water and not landed on her tail.

“I don’t think we can take a picture of this, exactly,” Athena says. “I usually just have Widget scan things or snap photos but - maybe if I put the glasses lens up to my phone camera—”

“You’re going to drop it in the water if you do that,” Phoenix says.

Athena shoves her phone back in her pocket and sounds indignantly teenager-ish as she says, “Fine, I won’t try that.”

What’s he talking about? She is a teenager.

“Can you just draw on your picture?” Pearl asks, lifting her glasses up and balancing them on top of her head. With her pink accessories, it almost does fit her fashion. “And mark the general areas that we saw the marks in?”

“Great idea, Pearly! Now let’s see here…” Athena taps Widget and projects one of its screens.

Phoenix inches cautiously past her to look down at Orla. The orca really does seem sad. There’s no energy to her whistles today, and while she’s probably unhappy in such a small amount of water, she’s got to be smart enough to have noticed her routine is very disrupted, and Sasha isn’t around. And now a bunch of strangers, really, are crowding down into her pool and spraying around some strange liquid and—

Wait - wait, is Orla sinking? She dips beneath the surface for several seconds at a time and then bobs back up, but her flippers and tail aren’t working to propel her, and she keeps going under for slightly longer each time— “Athena! Pearls! It looks like something’s wrong with Orla!”

“What?” They both shove their way in at the railing to either side of him, leaning out much further than they need to look down.

“Oh no,” Pearl says. “I got Luminol on her - is that why? What do we do, Mr Nick?”

“We’ve gotta go get Dr Crab!” Athena says. “Hey! Hi! Mr Police Officer Guy! Bring us back up please!”

“Where is he?” Pearl asks. “I’ll go, quick!”

“His office is by the Pub O’ Danger, where we met Ms DePlume yesterday!” Athena says. The hoist makes a long mechanical moan and jostles to life again. “But I’m a really fast runner, so when we get out of here, I’ll—”

Pearl vanishes.

“—go,” Athena finishes. Her mouth stays hanging open, and she blinks several times in rapid succession, her eyes narrowing further each time she reopens them. “Oh, yeah, she’s - wait, Boss, don’t faery rings make flowers or mushrooms or something?” She looks down at their feet. There are no flowers now, just as there were no flowers when Pearl vanished.

“Yeah,” Phoenix says. “Unless there’s a circle already made, but there isn’t so she should have—”

He accidentally glances to the bottom of the pool, now much further away, and regrets it as vertigo kicks in, but he has the answer now, too. “Oh,” he says. “There is. The whole pool is circular.”

“Ooh, that’s clever. She’s really clever.” Athena remains on the platform, while Phoenix stumbles back onto the solid aquarium floor, away from the maw of hell, the death pit, another horrible, horrible reminder that his fear of heights is very valid. “Hang in there, Orla!” she yells down. “We’ve got help on the way!”

The wait is agony. It’s not a long walk to the lab, and Pearl and Dr Crab will only be running back one way, Pearl has to already be there, but the vet has to make rounds of the aquarium, doesn’t he? What if he isn’t there? What if—

“What’s Orla’s condition?” The doors bang open and Dr Crab barrels in, Pearl hot on his heels behind him.

What if Phoenix is stressing himself out extra for no reason? That seems most likely!

“She seemed - really tired? And then she started sinking. Could she be unconscious?” Whales have to sleep, and Athena talked about that somewhere in the mess of everything she talked about this morning, and Phoenix followed none of it but what he can know is that this can’t be a normal orca nap. The species wouldn’t exist if they all drowned when they slept.

“Son of a bitch!” Crab skids to a halt as soon as he has an angle to see how little water is left in the orca pool. “Who did this?”

“You mean it’s not supposed to be drained?” Phoenix asks. “I thought it was for cleaning - or for the police investigation—”

“I sure as shit never authorized any pool draining!” Dr Crab snaps. “We’ve got another pool to put her in when we need cleaning! You, help me out here!”

“Us?” Phoenix echoes blankly.

“No, just all the other people hanging out in this room who I guess you can see and I can’t - yes, you three! The black fabric over there, looks like a pirate flag - that’s the orca stretcher! Go get it!”

Athena and Pearl race around the pool and begin flinging props aside to dig up the stretcher. “Now, you—” Dr Crab points at Phoenix. “The hoist controls over there, get to them!” Phoenix obediently hurries over to the control box on the wall. “Lower it down part way - we’ve got to hook the stretcher on it, drop it down and get Orla on it.”

“Won’t it be hard to get it under Orla?” Athena asks. She and Pearl are dragging the stretcher back as fast as they can, to where the winch has lowered the hooks down far enough that they would be able to attach something to it. Right, Sasha said that they can move props this way, too; the track the hooks are on leads all the way outside.

“It’s tricky, but we should be able to slide it in around her,” Dr Crab says. “It’s easier when the water level is up here and Sasha or Jack would just go in and hook it around her from the water—”

“I can do that!” Pearl says brightly, wrenching the stretcher out of Athena’s grasp. Athena, taken off-guard by the unexpected display of strength, stumbles and lands on the ground. Holding each of the stretcher poles in the middle in front of her, making a kind of canopy, Pearl runs around the edge of the pool until she stands above the side with Orla and the water, and jumps.

Athena shrieks; Dr Crab lets out a startled yell. But Pearl doesn’t fall. She floats, the stretcher puffed up like a parachute, the air itself cushioning her and easing her down, like a leaf drifting slowly down from a tree on a windless day.

It’s fortunate that Pearl never attended school like she once wanted to, with Trucy, to learn more human subjects. Having a basic understanding of physics would really cramp her style.

His curiosity overcoming his fear, Phoenix inches closer to the edge and peers down. Pearl lands gently on the water that turns to ice beneath her feet. She drops the stretcher in the water next to Orla and runs around her, ice appearing wherever she steps and disappearing as she raises her foot, and then the ice disappears from beneath her, sinking her into the water so that she can swim under Orla, grab the other side of the stretcher, and bring it back under her. “Lower the hooks!” she yells up, and Phoenix finally realizes again what they’re supposed to be doing and runs back over to the controls.

“That girl certainly isn’t normal,” Dr Crab mutters. His voice isn’t quite low enough for it to be said only to himself, but it is out of the range that Pearl, from the bottom of the pool, could hear. “Here, she’s got the stretcher attached. Raise it back up.”

Phoenix hits the last button to do that and approaches Dr Crab again. “You uh - why do you say that? About her—”

The question is not a good one in the slightest, but it’s something Phoenix heard a lot with Maya and Pearl and he learned to respond almost instinctively, heading off any questions about any little suspicious behaviors or appearances. Never was it something this blatant - but Dr Crab can’t know all that history behind Phoenix; all he knows is that he just asked an amazingly stupid question. “Hey, buddy?” he says and Phoenix braces himself. “You sure you’re a real lawyer? Or is this why you’ve fallen to defending orcas?”

Phoenix winces. He could’ve taken the general what are you, an idiot? question in stride, but that particular turn of phrase stings more than he expected.

The stretcher, Orla lying on it, rises up to the poolside. Pearl clings to one of the hooks that holds the stretcher, dangling in some well-meant attempt to give Orla as much room as possible. She stretches out a foot onto the floor but she’s still precariously balanced holding the stretcher, half of her body still over the far drop to the bottom of the pool. Athena rushes over and extends a hand to her to pull her to safety.

“All right, get back, all of you.” Dr Crab waves them off as Orla and her stretcher are lowered onto the floor. “Give me some space to figure out what’s wrong.” This time, his mumbling does seem like it’s only to himself. “Could she have eaten something? Gotta empty her stomach…”

Phoenix turns around and stares at the walls. He does not want to see or know how one gets the contents of an orca’s stomach back out. “Um, excuse me, Mr Doctor?” Pearl says quietly, and Phoenix hears the hesitant shuffle of her sandals across the floor. Dr Crab grunts an acknowledgement of her presence. “We were investigating the crime scene and I got some Luminol on Orla by mistake. Do you think that…?”

“What? Luminol? Nah, that stuff’s no problem. Just washes off. Orla’s condition’s got nothing to do with you, young lady.”

“O-oh.” She sounds the kind of relieved where there’s still a lot of fear left over, but one tiny little piece of it has been lessened. “And, um, I—”

“Oh that’s gross.” Athena pops up at Phoenix’s elbow, a thousand-yard stare turned on a blank stretch of wall. “I’m not really - urgh.”

“Don’t have the stomach to be an animal caretaker?” Phoenix asks, and she shudders. Apparently not.

“Listen, missy.” Dr Crab hasn’t chased Pearl off yet. “You don’t have to say anything else. Jack had a policy for aquarium staff, that he didn’t care who or what you were as long as you could do your job well and be safe doing it. And I’ll stand by that - you helped out, I don’t care about the rest, now the best way for you to keep helping is give me space to do my job.”

“O-of course.” There is the sound of Pearl shuffling back, and then she’s squeezed herself in between Athena and Phoenix. “Poor Orla. I hope she’ll be all right.”

“We’ll check with Dr Crab in a minute, once he’s not so busy.”

Can this be a coincidence? The owner dead on the anniversary of the trainer’s death; the orca sick once she’s found to be a framed innocent in the owner’s death. Does someone have it out for Orla? For the whole aquarium at large? What if it’s a ghost? The ghost of the dead trainer, out for revenge on the captain who didn’t protect her from the dangerous animal they worked with, and on the animal itself?

It seems a little absurd, but a ghost wouldn’t need a key card to get in the orca pool room. The biggest problem is that ghosts are very rarely actually real ghosts, but he’ll file that thought away in case they don’t come up with anything else. Blaming magic should be a last-ditch resort, because Blackquill will probably make a show of not believing in magic or fae even though he’s undeniably something more or less than human, and Edgeworth is already going to want to wring Phoenix’s neck for taking an orca to court. They haven’t actually spoken about this, but he has to know because he signs off on everything Blackquill does, and that he hasn’t offered Phoenix congratulations yet on regaining his badge seems - telling.

(He’ll sort it out with Edgeworth later. The case always comes first.)

“I’ve gotta go rustle up some crew members to refill the pool.” Dr Crab jolts Phoenix back to present, pressing matters. “And return to my rounds. You stay here until I get people sent over.”

“Is Orla gonna be all right?” Athena asks.

“She’ll be fine. She’s sleeping now - bit of time out of the water won’t kill her.”

“What was wrong?” Pearl asks. Now that they’re looking back at Orla, they can see a heap of mushy half-digested fish on the floor near her.

If Phoenix had any thoughts of being hungry left, after the traumatic heights experience of going down into the pool, they are long gone.

“That’s none of your damn business!” The return to hostility from Dr Crab makes Pearl jump. Brave man, to know what he’s snapping at and still do it. “I don’t need to share everything with you people!” He stalks off toward the doors.

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “If you’re going to get other staff - there’s got to be lots of people who work here, right? Sasha’s a suspect because she’s got the key card for this room and used it, but couldn’t she have let people in to help her clean?”

Dr Crab turns a withering stare on him. “We run a real skeleton crew during closing hours,” he says. “Me, Jack, Sasha, and Marlon, usually. Time frame for his death, you’re not really looking at anyone else.”

Which only gives them two other suspects. “But there’s so much aquarium!” Athena says. “How do you possibly clean it all and feed all the animals and still have time to sleep?”

“Most of the animal feeders are automated once the prep work’s done,” Dr Crab says, “I don’t sleep much because of this little shit” - he gestures at the penguin chick tucked half-asleep in his wild cloud of hair - “and the rest is none of your damn business either!”

“Sasha says the captain might’ve been a witch,” Athena calls after him. “Does that have something to do with how—”

The slam of the doors echoes loudly through the huge room.

“I bet that’s it,” Athena says, satisfied with herself.

“We should take a look around,” Phoenix says. “Before anyone else gets here.” Every new occurrence pushes this closer and closer to conspiracy in his mind. Dr Crab’s behavior is the tip of an iceberg in a long line of other icebergs. “And we should probably take a look at” - he presses his mouth closed over a reflexive gagging - “the contents of her stomach.”

“Oh, I’ll do that for you,” Pearl says brightly, but she slows as she approaches the fish remains, obviously not quite as cheery at the prospect as she pretends to be. She crouches down next to the pile and begins tentatively sniffing the air above it. Then she relaxes.

“Isn’t that awful?” Athena asks. “If you can smell dried blood and - whatever, isn’t a pile of fish guts just nasty?”

“It’s a very very strong smell,” Pearl says, “but it’s not as bad smelling as it looks.”

“I’ll take your word for it from over here,” Athena says.

“It’s probably subjective,” Phoenix says.

Pearl, still crouched, shuffles forward until her toes are nearly in the fish slush pile. For a moment she intently studies it and then her hand darts out, plunging her forefinger and thumb in and pulling back almost immediately with something colorful pinched between her fingers. “Here,” she says, dropping it in her other palm, and licking her fingers clean of partially-digested fish.

The wave of nausea that passes over Phoenix is more like a tsunami. “Pearls…” She freezes and stares at him. “Don’t tell me Maya’s been that bad of an influence on you, too.”

“Who else has she influenced?” Pearl asks, very carefully not acknowledging the accusation leveled against her. The answer is still obvious.

“Iris ate garbage can pizza crust,” Phoenix says.

“Oh.” Pearl ponders that for a second, rolling whatever-it-is that she’s found around in her palm. “She didn’t always?”

“No.” Phoenix, at age twenty, dumb as he was, would not have dated a girl who ate pizza crusts out of the garbage. He had standards, but of the sort where he was still convinced that women were mythic beings incapable of grossness. Phoenix at age thirty-four is pretty sure no matter who he dates, he himself is the garbage pizza crust person in the equation.

“Pearly, you know Iris?” Poor Athena. She’s so far out of the loop that she can’t even see it.

“Of course I do! She’s my sister!”

“Oh! Oh, she did say something about having a sister, I think.” And that could be one of two people, depending on what she said, and surely it was Pearl, because there are some things that Iris doesn’t mention the way Phoenix doesn’t mention those same things. Knowing that doesn’t stop the momentary flinch. Maybe nothing will. Maybe time, but this much time still hasn’t been enough. The mark around his neck doesn’t fade, nor does the red in Iris’ hair.

“So I guess it’s not that weird, Mr Wright knowing all of you,” Athena continues. “He just knows a family of you. That makes sense!”

“No,” Pearl says. “It’s still kind of weird.”

“So what did you find, Pearls?” Phoenix interrupts. He knows it’s weird. He doesn’t need Pearl divulging anything more on that front.

She extends her hand, showing a red-and-yellow capsule with some faint writing on it, 3 Zs. “Sleeping pill” is his first thought, based on that, but he wouldn’t put it past drug companies to have it actually be something entirely different. “Huh? Some medication?” Athena asks. “Was Orla sick before this too? We should ask Dr Crab what this is for.”

It seems sort of nice - naive? - that her first thought is that it’s medication Orla is meant to have, and not someone trying to drug her. With all that’s happening he can’t count it out. “We shouldn’t,” Phoenix says. “I think he’s hiding something about what’s going on with Orla, and if we show him this he might try and take it.”

What Phoenix can say about being threatened by the mob and tazed and threatened by a different gangster and such forth is that, eventually, he sort of learned the lesson to take care in who knows what he’s investigating.

“I wouldn’t let him!” Pearl closes her fist around the capsule and shakes her sleeves back.

“I know, but we still don’t want to go around starting fights.” There is no reason for them to try and explain how the aquarium’s veterinarian ended up smacked through two concrete walls if they don’t have to. “We can ask for Apollo’s help when we get back to the office.”

“Or I can just go now!”

Without waiting for a response - though Phoenix does call after her, “Yeah, sure thing!” - Pearl races around the pool to the far side where the pile of props has been scattered into more a field of props, and the marker to play volleyball with Orla is painted on the floor. It’s an yellow circle, with two orange footprints inside of it; Pearl bounds into the circle and vanishes, not all at once, but as her body passes into the line of the circle. It’s a sight he never really gets used to.

He hopes Pearl explains where the capsule was found so Apollo can take appropriate precautions, like finding gloves - Phoenix is pretty sure there’s got to be a box of rubber gloves that Ema dropped off at some point - or a plastic bag or not putting his hands anywhere near his face because they plucked it out of orca puke. He should have told her to be sure to mention that. She probably won’t mention that. Ah well. Apollo, and Trucy if she joins in, should be fine. Orca barf probably won’t kill them.

Probably.

“What’s taking her so long?” It’s not even been a minute, he’s pretty sure, and already Athena is antsy, hopping back and forth foot to foot, ready, now that there’s nothing more they can help Orla with, to head out and investigate the next place.

“She probably scared the hell out of Apollo and Trucy and has to calm them down before she can explain,” Phoenix says.

“Apollo probably screamed so loud and when she gets back she won’t be able to hear.” Athena giggles.

After another minute or two, Pearl reappears, rubbing the side of her head. “Did you scare them?” Phoenix calls over.

“Shh!” Athena hisses. “Orla’s sleeping!”

Pearl trots back over, her finger held to her lips, shushing him as well, but once she is less than a foot away she says, “Yes. They both shout very loudly.”

“Yeah.” Trucy’s a singer, among everything else she tries to do in her spare time, and Apollo is just loud, and they both probably have their mother’s lungs. Not that Thalassa has ever screamed at him, because he figures she’s probably like a banshee in that if she ever screams at him it’s the preface to his death. He’d probably deserve it if he got her to that point.

“The detective said he was going to the show stage when he left here,” Pearl says. “He wanted to speak with Mr Animal Feeder. We should go too.”

Several aquarium staff members arrive half a minute later. Phoenix is glad they missed seeing Pearl’s disappearance and reappearance. He can’t expect them to be as chill as Dr Crab.

Fulbright is nowhere to be seen when they reach the stage; Rimes is there with cleaning supplies, a bucket of fish, no penguin, and all the decor of the show set up all around. It isn’t like the mess of the pool room. These props are actually arranged. A cheery hand-painted “Swashbuckler Spectacular” sign lies propped up on some crates, and a skeleton wearing a pirate bandana sits on a raft moored to the side of the pool with a rope. Can’t have it go careening everywhere and get in the way of where the show action happens, he supposes.

“Can I start doing forensics here?” Pearl asks. “I want to use the fingerprint powder too!” She’s beaming again, seeming nothing more than a slightly-sheltered teenage girl with an eagerness to help any way she can.

(Which she is, in part, and not in whole.)

“Sure thing, Small Fry,” Rimes says. “You’ve got the run of the place!” Pearl takes that permission by, literally, sprinting off across the stage, to one of the furthest points near the pirate ship. “And how can I help you out, lawyer-man?”

When Phoenix asks, Rimes happily explains to them the mechanics of the show area, about how the hoist track lets them move props and Orla between the pool room, where they practice, and the show stage. He reluctantly trips up and admits to them the rumor that the captain was taking Sasha out of the new orca show; and then, more angry than reluctant, says that he still doesn’t trust the orca not to have been responsible for the captain’s death. “The other day, during practice,” he says, voice low, “I saw that orca take Sasha in her mouth and just squeeze her, around the chest, so bad she couldn’t even blow her whistle. And I shoulda - I shoulda jumped in there and helped get her out, but I didn’t.” He hangs his head sadly. “I’m a weak man. Can’t save anyone. Couldn’t help Sasha then, can’t help her now, couldn’t…”

“I can’t imagine anyone who would want to, or even could, tangle with an orca.” Phoenix wishes he had any real reassurance, anything more than what he always ends up thinking, that saving people is a tricky, terrible thing, and he himself always did everything he could and still telling himself that didn’t let him sleep every night. That’s not the answer anyone wants to hear.

“Yeah,” Rimes says. “No one normal, anyway.”

His hand dips toward his pocket, and Phoenix’s heart dips down into the deep caverns in his chest. It could be an innocuous statement and movement, but when Athena asks if he’s sure that Sasha and Orla weren’t practicing the lifesaver trick and Rimes’ attention turns to her, Phoenix flashes a Sighted glance over him. Rimes is normal, almost, borderline normal, but there’s a dark hollow spot on his chest - the shape of a mitamah, like Thalassa, but not the absence of a soul. Just a crack around the edges, loosened but not lost. And in his pocket, the one he reached for when he said he wasn’t strong enough, the energy that thrums there is the shape of a magatama, near to bursting with deep red, angry power.

It’s not that every time Phoenix meets someone involved with magic, he assumes they’re the culprit, because that would be hypocritical of him because he’s also very involved with magic, and - okay yeah he’s still usually a hypocrite. He makes that assumption often. Sure, it steers him wrong, but he steers himself wrong on cases where he doesn’t make that assumption, either, and there seems to be a correlation more often than not.

Someone who’s made a deal that he can See is always bound up in some shit, he can say that much.

“Mr Nick! Mr Nick!” Pearl hurries back toward them, waving the container of fingerprinting powder. “I found some very strange fingerprints!” Rimes and Athena both turn from their debate - furious argument - over Orla to look at her. “Do you want to hear about - oh!” She gasps, her hand coming up quickly to cover her mouth, and still not in time to hide her large fangs that have slipped carelessly through her glamour. For as powerful as she is, that often happens when she’s very startled. Her eyes are wide, red pooling in the center of her dark irises, staring in shock and perhaps a bit of fear (though Phoenix really, really hopes it isn’t) at something behind them all. “Mr Nick, that’s - he’s—!”

Phoenix turns, and comes face-to-face with Simon Blackquill.

Pearl grabs Phoenix’s elbow, her claw-pointed fingers squeezing him through several layers of fabric, and she presses up close behind him. She isn’t quite keeping out of sight of Blackquill, so maybe it’s not an attempt to hide, but more a message - that she is literally and figuratively behind Phoenix, and if it’s trouble Blackquill wants to make, he will have to reckon with her.

Considering her, Blackquill’s eyes, irises and pupils both, flash straight silver. Blue is the color of humans’ Sight; red is unglamoured fae eyes. What the hell is that?

He’s still in handcuffs, still in black, a strange picture in the bright natural sunlight, jaring against the colorful backdrop of the aquarium and the blue sky. And he’s taller than Phoenix realized - across the courtroom, he figured they were more-or-less level, but now it’s clear that Blackquill has several inches over him, a looming shadow able to swallow all of them.

“Prosecutor Blackquill!” Phoenix’s voice squeaks on the first sound he makes; Blackquill doesn’t acknowledge it even with a condescending smirk. “What are you doing here?”

Translation: I didn’t know you were allowed out anywhere but the courthouse.

Blackquill answers like the words are dragged from him, reluctant, not wanting to bother with the defense attorneys, but knowing that he has to or he’ll get some more patronizing reprimands from Fulbright. “Just some business to attend to.”

“With us?” Athena pipes up. She, when Phoenix manages to sort of turn, despite Pearl’s grip on his arm, to look at her, doesn’t appear as concerned as Pearl. Just - confused, more than anything.

“No,” Blackquill answers curtly.

Were Phoenix in a gambling mood, both with his life and on what Blackquill is, he’d ask if the prosecution’s important matter is seeing the penguins, but he’s not in that mood.

“Prosecutor Blackquill very strenuously insisted on accompanying me, so I thought it would be a good chance for him to stretch his legs and get some fresh air!” Fulbright explains, seeming to miss the withering glare Blackquill turns on him as soon as he begins speaking. They don’t really seem to be on the same wavelength about anything.

(Also Phoenix is now more sure that he wouldn’t be gambling if he says the reason Blackquill is here is the penguins. He feels a bit bad for the man, honestly, that Rifle isn’t around, but he also doesn’t think Athena’s heart would be able to take it if Rifle, given the choice, preferred Prosecutor Blackquill to her.)

“Marlon Rimes.” Blackquill’s usage of names has always seemed twisted up backwards, as far as fae custom goes; epithets for all but vanquished foes, while Blackquill doesn’t hesitate to use names, but mostly turns relentlessly mocking nicknames on everyone who doesn’t have his respect. Everything about Blackquill is twisted up backwards. “You will be a witness to the prosecution at the trial tomorrow.”

“What? No!” Rimes flinches backwards. Phoenix steps to the side, Pearl moving with him, to give a clear passage of conversation between the two of them. He wants to be able to see both of their reactions to the other, if either of them notices anything about the other. “Why would I wanna testify against Sasha?”

Blackquill takes a step forward, chains clinking. Rimes stumbles back several paces, opening further distance between them. “Curious that you think what you ‘want’ factors at all into this conversation. Now, come with us.” Another step forward. The air gets colder. The pool water stills and seems to pale.

“Wait!” Rimes holds up his hands pleadingly. “If I go, who’s gonna feed the orca? She’s got a strict schedule, this afternoon and tomorrow morning, and all of the other day shift keepers are afraid to get near her now! I can’t just go—”

An ill-fated but valiant attempt at escape, but Phoenix doesn’t get to find out how Blackquill would go about responding with his usual, erm, finesse. Pearl instead is the one to push Rimes further into the prosecution’s grasp. “Um, maybe I can help?” she says. The pressure of her claws in Phoenix’s arm finally relents. “I can feed her and call in to the trial tomorrow again if I need to! I’m worried about Orla and want to make sure she’s all right and this way I can stay close to her.”

She hasn’t said much about it today, after her outburst when they left yesterday, but she’s still thinking about that, isn’t she. The reflections. She still wants to help Orla.

Rimes stumbles backwards another few steps. “Small Fry, you lost your head? You on somethin’? Even the other keepers who’re trained are afraid of her! You’re just a - a small fry, and that orca’s dangerous, y’know?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that!” Pearl smiles, with her lips pressed together, her teeth kept out of sight. “All my friends are dangerous!”

Rimes opens his mouth - closes it - opens it and juts his jaw out and shakes his head and decides that this, whatever this is, is something he is going to accept without further questioning. “Yeah,” he says, and then when Pearl realizes a possible issue with her video-phoning Orla in to the trial tomorrow - that she doesn’t have a video phone - he further relents to let her borrow his. “All right. Thanks a bunch, Small Fry, goin’ outta your way to help like this.” He sighs. “I still don’t wanna testify but I’ll at least see what the police have to say and what they want outta me.”

Pearl, clutching the video phone in both hands, returns to Phoenix’s side, pressing her shoulder into his arm. “And I’ll need to feed Rifle, too, right, Mr Animal Keeper? Is that her bucket of fish right - hey! That’s not yours!”

Every head swivels about looking for Rimes’ fish bucket. Taka goes still but for its head, twitching about to peer at them from different angles with its beady yellow eyes, a fish hanging from its beak. Apparently having decided on whatever it was pondering, it throws its head back and horks down the fish, whole.

Phoenix, as clueless about hawks as he is most animals, wonders if that’s just how hawks eat, or if that’s a fae thing, like the hound choking down a cardboard takeout container of Chinese leftovers in one gulp, or Maya biting into a carton of ice cream like a sandwich.

“Let us be off, then!” Fulbright says. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Rimes! You’re helping us further the cause of justice, as we will continue as we discuss strategy.”

“Ugh!” Athena’s disgust is very loud and very deliberately acted for Fulbright’s benefit, or the opposite of benefit. “C’mon, Mr Wright, Pearly! We’ve got our own strategy and investigation to do!”

Rimes skirts several feet around Blackquill, making a few strange hops and skips to get past him as quickly as possible. Fulbright follows, putting himself between Rimes and Blackquill, but Blackquill hasn’t moved at all, instead watching Taka rip apart a larger fish and swallow it in two separate pieces. He blinks his eyes closed and keeps them closed, and, if possible, appears even more exhausted than Phoenix already thought. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Anything we can do to help our client is never a waste of time,” Phoenix says. He’s not going to be baited into a fight, he’s not. There’ll be enough of that in court tomorrow.

“The police have turned every stone in the course of their investigation. What do you hope to find that they have not? Or perhaps you intend to make something that they have not found, instead?”

“Huh?” Athena doesn’t follow the implication. Phoenix only wishes he didn’t know exactly what Blackquill is getting at.

“I want the truth, Prosecutor Blackquill, and I believe the truth is that Sasha didn’t kill Jack Shipley.”

Blackquill snorts. “You ‘believe’. First the orca, now Sasha Buckler. You think you can save them both? That you do not damn one by acquitting the other? Admit you do this for your own benefit - for your reputation, a bombastic, sensational case to wash away the prior association with your name. For the money, because this aquarium surely would pay a pretty penny to not lose its main attraction and the only orca trainer it has left.”

“We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do!” Athena yells. She has the fish bucket in one hand, and swats at Taka with the other, while the hawk attempts again and again to dive down into the bucket and steal another fish. With a clank she lets the bucket drop to the ground - Taka plunges in feet-first - and storms up toward Blackquill. Pearl reaches out a hand, about to grab Athena’s elbow and pull her back, and stops. “You know how not about the money Mr Wright is, huh?”

“Athena,” Phoenix says quietly. “Don’t. He’s just saying this to get a rise out of us.”

“I interned in a bunch of law offices in Europe” - like Blackquill’s supposed to know she studied and lived in Europe for the past seven years - “and most of them weren’t about the money either, but it’d still be pretty soonish that we’d have to talk about fees—”

“Athena,” Phoenix interrupts, more sternly, because he can see where this is going and it’s not going to make him look professional in the slightest.

“—but with Mr Wright that’s the last thing that ever comes up for our defense, and—”

Blackquill’s sharp laugh interrupts her this time, a sound close to his hawk’s shrieks. “Oh, this is rich,” he says, and in that moment there’s something close to amusement in his tone, but he isn’t smiling even after the laugh, and he drops back into a chilled monotone as he continues. “You certainly aren’t rich, but this is. Sacrificing your students’ livelihoods on the altar of your principles? Concern, is it, for every sad person to come through your door but those that stay closest to you.”

“That’s not true either!” Athena stomps forward and places herself right in front of Blackquill, between him and Phoenix, tilting her head back to stare him in the eyes. Such a stark contrast between them, her fiery hair and clothing the color of the sun and him, dark, drab, and utterly still even with this energetic and furious girl right in his face. “I can pay for rent and food and whatever else I want, for your information, thankyouverymuch, if you even said that not trying to get a one-up on Mr Wright but because you care, which you—”

She gives up, chokes herself off, not another breath to waste on a man who might as well be stone above her. At her sides, her hands curl into fists, and all of her frustration from the words she didn’t finish turns itself into a frustrated, wordless yell. Blackquill lifts his head and turns his face away, surveying the water.

“Prosecutor Blackquill, we should be off!” Fulbright calls. Taka squawks indignantly from its fish feast. “You’ll have plenty of time to argue with Mr Wright and Ms Cykes when you see them tomorrow!”

“Would that I didn’t,” Blackquill drawls. He steps back away from Athena first, but it’s clear this isn’t a retreat, isn’t letting her win, and without another word he puts his back to them. Taka rips a strip of meat off of one of the largest fish, leaving the rest, and flaps up to Blackquill’s shoulder.

“Gah!” Athena’s hands snap back open and she lifts them to her head, digging into her hair like she’s about to pull it out. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life! What an asshole!” Her hands smack back to her sides and she forces her face to relax, puts a strained smile on instead. “I think I need a second to splash off the anger. Be right back!”

She heads for the pool’s edge, stooping down and splashing some up against her face.

Pearl snaps into motion, one hand that was resting against the beads of her necklace yanking away, and were it really a necklace it would have broken apart - but the glamour comes apart instead, the four shining beads drifting in a loose formation in the air around her face, and the magatama following her fingertips as she raises her hand. She stops with her hand up to her face, the magatama hovering in front of one eye. The other squints shut and the magatama hums with faint green energy. “He’s very strange, isn’t he?” she asks no one in particular.

Athena, straightening back up, spots an empty bucket lying on its side and grabs it and scoops water into it from the pool.

“Wait,” Phoenix says. “The magatama - you’re using it like - can you not just see him as he is?” Humans who have the Sight don’t need a magatama to peer through. Fae certainly don’t - or shouldn’t. He hadn’t actually considered whether that would help him cut through Blackquill, but his still sits in his pocket, like always, so at the very least, Blackquill’s general aura isn’t a glamour. Not like Klavier.

“No,” Pearl says. “He’s very good at pretending. He doesn’t want anyone to see him for who he is.” She lowers her hand and the magatama lowers with it.

She’s as vague and directionless with her information as her oldest cousin, sometimes. “And?” Phoenix prompts. “What is he? Can you tell?” “Corpses don’t bleed, do they,” Pearl muses. She might not have heard him asking; she’s spaced out somewhere he can’t follow, puzzling out all that she’s seen and felt, all the little traces of magic that thread themselves around anyone who gets in close. “The heart no longer beats to push blood out.”

“Pearls?” Phoenix asks again.

Athena flings the water from the bucket at Blackquill’s back. His shoulders twitch and he flicks his head backwards, like he’s tossing his bangs from his eyes, and Athena shrieks as the water splashes back over her.

“He would throw himself off the gallows willingly,” Pearl says. “He forfeit his life and his soul with his plea, but his heart won’t stop bleeding and he can’t bring himself to cut it out, too. He needs it.”

“Are you being literal or metaphorical when you say mention his soul?” Phoenix asks. Mitamah always refers to the actual, physical - metaphysical? - bit that can be bought and sold and lost, and while they generally use soul in that same way, sometimes the fae get… poetic. Obfuscating. Unnecessarily obtuse, unwittingly frustrating, and sometimes wittingly frustrating, but that’s usually never Pearl. She tends to think she’s being clear when she isn’t, and then she fears she’s been too clear and someone will be angry with her for divulging their secrets, and then she’ll clam up, and Phoenix is left to decode this sort of thing.

His soul - Phoenix has wondered what he is for months. It would help him narrow it down if Pearl would answer. Does she mean he gave up his morals when he committed murder or lied about it - or was it his literal soul? “Pearls? Can you tell me?”

The floating orbs drift back into place, and together with the magatama take shape as a necklace once again. “He won’t let you save him,” Pearl says, very softly. “He can’t let you see.”

Can’t-cant, or doesn’t-want-to can’t? And if Pearl hasn’t answered him directly by now then she won’t, or can’t. Because sometimes Phoenix thinks this is just how they are, of a culture of secrets and caution, and though they don’t tell him to stop, their rambling indirect “answers” are their attempts to politely steer him away from his faux-pas, showing him how he’s supposed to talk instead. And sometimes he thinks that their inability to answer some certain questions is a complex web of magic in their blood and their realm, rules too complex to follow that they aren’t even aware of that leaves them speaking vaugeries. Is a changeling who doesn’t know what she is aware that she can’t lie, or does she not notice this way she instinctively is? Are there some obscure bargains and bylaws and treaties that trip Pearl and Mia in random places and they never notice because twisting their way around the truth is already as natural as breathing?

Athena’s boots squelch with every step she takes back to them. “Hey, what are we talking about?” she asks. “I wasn’t paying attention.” She balances herself on one foot, hopping every so often to keep upright, and peels off one boot, then switches feet to remove the other. “Pearly, you said something about fingerprints before that jerk showed up? Catch me up on that!”

That’s definitely not what they were talking about, but it’s something they need to know. Pearl explains the prints, made by Rimes’ right hand on the left side of the ladder, the thumb pointing down, like he was gripping it from above, leaning out over the pool. Odd, but Phoenix isn’t sure how to connect it to anything else, and though he always tells himself that the case comes first - Blackquill is still a case that Phoenix will have to deal with, eventually, and existentially, he seems like the most important problem.

#roddy fanfics #fic: the witches of los angeles

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