Missions

Everyone has their own mission. Sometimes they help each other, sometimes not. But when it comes to a certain prosecutor and a certain infamous thief, crossing paths is more dangerous than anyone ever anticipated.

a.n.

It's been almost two years since this was updated, but here I am.

Chapter Four

They went out for burgers. It was something they rarely did, but Phoenix always needed a burger when he was stressed or upset. So on the night of November 18th, Phoenix parked his rickety Dodge Challenger (received as payment from a client two years before, which had forced Phoenix and Trucy to both get their driver's licence) in the spot closest to the entrance of Burger Palace and pushed his way through the heavy glass door, his daughter following him with a worried expression on her face.

The teenager behind the counter looked surprised to see them there and took their order cautiously, waiting until Phoenix had sat down at their normal table before speaking to Trucy, who had yet to order.

"Your dad's not feeling well, I guess?" he asked, punching in her order before she spoke. Despite how little they visited the restaurant, this particular cashier always remembered them. Perhaps it was because he had a phenomenal memory — or perhaps it was due to the fact that both she and her father were creatures of habit, and rarely changed their order anywhere once they found one they really liked, a trait that annoyed both Pearl and Apollo whenever they went out to dinner as a group.

"Things are a little rough right now," she admitted, passing the twenty-dollar bill her father had pushed into her hands moments before over the counter to pay for their twelve-dollar meal. The cashier smiled grimly as he handed her the change.

"I could tell," he stated simply, watching her carefully. "You guys are never in here unless something's up."

Trucy leaned against the counter to wait while the cashier prepared their order, picking up the burgers from the warming tray behind him, filling plasticized paper cups full of soda (Sprite for her, Root Beer for Phoenix), and making sure their fries were fresh and piping hot.

"You're pretty observant, aren't you?" she asked as he arranged the food just so on the tray and took a step back, admiring his work with satisfaction. "You have a good memory, I mean," she amended when she noticed the hesitant look on his face, as though he were unsure whether or not he should be offended.

He shrugged casually, as though it were no big deal, but she could tell he was secretly pleased that she had noticed. "I'm a musician," he explained. "Memory is kind of my thing."

"Oh?" She tilted her head to the side, interested. "What do you play?"

"Violin." He said it slightly defensively, as though used to criticism over his choice of instrument. But Trucy was impressed.

"I've heard that the violin is one of the most difficult instruments to play." she commented, hoping to wipe the protective layer from his features and make him smile again. It worked; he beamed with pleasure.

"It is. But I really enjoy it."

She smiled back at him and picked up the tray. "That's all that really matters." She started to head to the table where her father sat, waiting, then turned back. "I'll see you at the next crisis..." She craned her neck to see his name tag. "Jeff." She caught a glimpse of his grin before she headed back to her table, and it produced a grin of her own... at least until she sat down across from her father and saw the expression of mixed despair and fury blanketing his normally-austere features. Avoiding his eyes, Trucy picked at her fries until they got cold, her stomach strangely opposed to the idea of ingesting anything while Phoenix glowered at his cup of soda as though it had done him a personal wrong. Unable to bear the tension any longer, Trucy stood up. The chair scraped with agonizing volume against the gritty tile floor and everyone in the restaurant winced at the sound, but Trucy ignored it.

"I'm going to the bathroom," she announced loudly, glaring at her father. He gave no sign that he'd heard her, but the patrons at a table nearby gave little gasps of shock at her pronouncement. As she passed them, she 'accidentally' nudged against the purse of the primmest-looking socialite and apologized profusely, hiding the small tube of lipstick she'd lifted in her sleeve until she was safely in a surprisingly clean restroom stall. It was an expensive brand – one that she herself had never been and probably would never be able to afford – and so she took a sick sort of delight in dropping it into the toilet with a satisfying splash.

She might write a good essay, but Trucy held fast to the ethics she'd learned as a child. Phoenix would have been proud.

He would not, however, been proud of what she did next.

The lipstick now bobbing in the cool, clean water was joined by the long brown hair and the heavy silver coin from her pocket. She knelt in front of the toilet and carefully shook the dust from her scarf into the bowl as well, wiping it down until no trace of dust remained on the silk. Just as she was getting to her feet and stowing the scarf in its usual place (her sleeve: the better to use for a magic trick, my dear), her cell phone vibrated once and let out a little tinkling chime, letting her know she'd received a text message. She dug the tiny machine from her pocket and opened the message, sighing impatiently as the ancient phone took its sweet time following her instructions.

The number was blocked, and the message was short and to the point: ?

Trucy smiled slightly and flushed the toilet, watching the items in it swirl around and around and around until they were whisked out of sight by the swift current. Then she texted back: !

The bathroom was just as empty as she left as it had been when she entered, so she didn't bother washing her hands, opting instead to text Pearl while her phone was out, on, and working (which was a rare occurrence): Have a good time at the mall?

The response came just as she sat back down across from her father, whose eyebrow jumped up as she checked the message.

"Apollo?" he asked – a reasonable assumption, to be sure, since the young defense attorney was practically the only person Trucy ever bothered to text – while Trucy read the message.

"No..." she said slowly, her lips moving while her mind was otherwise occupied. "Pearl. Apparently there was a sale at that new-age crystal store and she bought a whole box of... magatamas?" She handed the phone over to Phoenix, having intentionally mispronounced the word. He squinted slightly at the small screen, then nodded.

"Useful things," he commented idly, returning his attention to the half-eaten burger in front of him. Trucy stared at him as he ate, her own food lying completely forgotten. His ire seemed to have abated and he chewed with an air of unhurried enjoyment that was completely belied by the bouncing of his left heel. She stared, he ate, and the stalemate went unbroken for several long, increasingly tense minutes until Trucy snapped.

"So this is how we're playing it?" she demanded, slamming a hand on the table and startling the debutante from whom Trucy had stolen the lipstick. Phoenix's eyebrow hopped up his forehead again and he stopped chewing with his mouth full of burger, looking deliberately surprised by her outburst. Trucy leaned forward and lowered her voice to a hiss. "Edgeworth's a mess, the Yatagarasu has information on him that will definitely be leaked to the press, you were a raging ball of stress and frustration until five minutes ago, and now we're going to pretend like nothing's wrong?"

Phoenix's expression slowly settled and then froze in a mask of perfect calm as he finished chewing, swallowed, lifted his soda to his lips, took a long sip, and then replaced the cup; all done with excruciating care and with prolonged, precise motions. Trucy wanted to be angry with him, but her own frustration refused to hold against his composure. She felt herself gradually deflating and nodded, understanding his silent message. This wasn't a conversation to have in public. It wasn't even a conversation to have when Pearl was around. It would have to wait.

Placated for the moment, Trucy turned her attention to her food, but her stomach was still refusing to co-operate. Sighing heavily, she made to stand up again but was stopped by the sudden and rather shocking appearance of a brown paper bag in her face. She spluttered and jerked back, nearly falling out of her chair, but Jeff grabbed her arm and steadied her.

"Sorry," he said, chagrined, as Phoenix laughed heartily from across the table. "I didn't mean to scare you." He held out the bag, biting his lip. "I brought you this."

Trucy looked from the bag to the young man's face, confused but impressed. "I was just coming to get one of these from you. How did you know?"

Jeff shrugged, looking pleased with himself but obviously trying not to show it. "Like you said earlier, I guess. I'm pretty observant."

Trucy took the bag and opened it, pushing her hand into the bottom to make it pop into shape. "You most certainly are. Thank you." Jeff blushed, his face turning an interesting shade of red at the earnest tone of her gratitude. He waved awkwardly as though to say 'it was nothing' and stood there for a moment, watching her pack up her untouched meal, then seemed to regain control of himself and zoomed back to the counter to take an order. When father and daughter left a few minutes later, Jeff permitted himself to watch them return to their car, only to be caught by Trucy, who waved cheerfully as he blushed again and nearly dropped the handful of change he was counting.

"That boy has a crush on you," Phoenix remarked as he started the car – the first words he'd spoken since his daughter's return from the bathroom. He glanced at her to find a self-satisfied smirk on her lips.

"Who doesn't?" she asked, buckling her seatbelt.

..m.i.s.s.i.o.n.s..

The kitchen light was still on when Trucy returned to her apartment; she had seen it from the street when Phoenix dropped her off. Knowing what it meant, Trucy was glad she'd never gotten around to eating her burger that evening (though she and Pearl had polished off the fries during a game of Monopoly that had ended with a disgruntled Phoenix flicking his daughter's game-piece off the board and announcing "Time for ice cream!") as she trudged up the stairs and unlocked the door to the fifth floor. The hallway light flickered obnoxiously as Trucy approached 5C, and she made a mental note to mention it to the landlord at the weekly fifth-floor tenant's meeting on the weekend.

She unlocked the door to her apartment and was surprised to hear that the squeak of old hinges that usually accompanied the door's opening was absent. The landlord must have come by to fix it after she had mentioned the problem at the previous week's tenant's meeting. Mentioned on Saturday, fixed on Tuesday; Trucy smiled to herself. She really had lucked out on this living arrangement.

Speaking of which... She kicked off her shoes and padded into the kitchen, where her roommate sat staring at a large stack of books, looking miserable.

"You're up late," she commented, moving to the oven and turning the broiler on high. The only response she received was a low groan, to which she nodded sagely as she pulled the cardboard box containing her left-over burger from the paper bag. "I hear ya," she agreed, taking a roll of aluminum foil from a drawer, ripping off a sheet, and transferring the burger from the box to the thin metal material, wrapping it up with care and sliding it into the oven. Her roommate groaned again and she finally turned to face him, tossing the bag and box into the recycling bin under the sink as she did so. "You okay?" Her voice was laced with pity.

"It's this case," Apollo grumbled, running his hands through his hair for what must have been the thousandth time that night, judging by the extreme disarray of the normally-gelled brown locks. Trucy pulled out the chair closest to her and sank into it, pulling one of the books toward her.

"Hm... 'A Compendium of Unusual Restitution Cases and Their Decisions, 1600-2020'?" Apollo shook his head and pointed at the words beneath the title she'd just read. " 'Volume 1'? How many volumes are there?"

Trucy had never heard her brother sound more miserable than he did when he said: "Eight."

"Oh, Polly." Trucy stood and circled the table, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing tight. Apollo sank into her embrace and pressed his face into her arm.

"I'm exhausted, Truce," he moaned, his voice muffled. "This case is killing me. My client wants me to argue on the basis of some ancient familial laws that apparently his family have been maintaining for centuries so that he doesn't have to pay his restitution in monetary value, but he trespassed and caused damage to the claimant's personal property, so I can't even argue that the defendant's laws exist on his own property." He pulled away from the hug and looked up at Trucy. "I should never have switched to civil law. It's the worst."

Chuckling, Trucy patted her brother's head and grabbed a plate from a cupboard. "How does he want to pay?" she asked, slipping an oven mitt over her left hand and reaching into the oven to pull out the foil-wrapped burger. When she unwrapped it, the bun was warm and crisp, the delicious smell of seasoned beef and pickles wafting up to her as she set it on the plate.

"With jewelry." Apollo accepted the plate with a nod of thanks when Trucy offered it. "He's a pretty accomplished jeweler and his work is excellent, but the claimant is refusing." He took a bite of the burger and spoke with his mouth full. "To be honest, I think the claimant's just being an a–" His words broke off into a moan of pleasure and he looked at Trucy with an expression of adoration. "This is delicious." He took another bite and chewed slowly, obviously savouring the taste. "How did you know I didn't have dinner tonight?"

Trucy sat back in her chair and snagged a fallen pickle from the plate. "Because you're my brother and you're an idiot." He glared, but the intensity of it was undermined slightly by his bulging cheeks. "Have you tried for a settlement?"

Apollo nodded, swallowing with difficulty in order to speak. "Nothing doing. Both clients are refusing to move an inch. The claimant wants money, and Jasper Stone wants to uphold his family's traditional laws. Neither is willing to even say the word 'compromise'. It's a nightmare." He finished the burger with a satisfied grin, smacking his lips. "But enough about me. Why are you home so late? It's almost one in the morning."

Trucy frowned, fingering the delicate embossed lettering on the book nearest her. "Didn't you get my text? Pearl's in town." Frowning, Apollo grabbed his phone from the table beside him and looked at the screen.

"Oops. Guess it was on silent." He looked up at his sister and frowned, absently fingering the gold bracelet on his left wrist. "You okay? You're biting the inside of your cheek. Unsure about something?"

Trucy covered her mouth and gave him a half-hearted scowl. "H-hey," she admonished, without much rancour. "We promised not to do that to each other."

Apollo shook his head, eyes locked on hers. "I never signed that contract." He leaned forward, not noticing that his elbow landed on the plate. "Spill before I cross-examine you, kiddo."

Trucy needed no further urging. She had never intended to keep that night's events from him anyway, even if he hadn't noticed her stress. She and Apollo had no secrets. Ever since they had learned of their shared parentage just over five years before – they had celebrated their five-year sibling anniversary on November 1st, in reference to the day in 2026 when Phoenix had finally told them who they were – neither had kept anything from the other. Trucy knew about Apollo's time in orphanages and foster care; Apollo knew about Trucy's life before becoming a Wright. Trucy knew about the girl who had broken Apollo's heart in high school; Apollo knew about the times Trucy used her skills as a budding magician to sneak out of the house to go to parties.

Trucy knew that Apollo had switched to civil law because he'd completely lost faith in the legal system; Apollo knew that Trucy was one-third of the Second Yatagarasu.

So she told him. By the time she had finished, the clock above the kitchen sink said 2:30, and Apollo was halfway through his third beer. He'd grabbed one for himself and one for Trucy when she had dropped her first bombshell on him, and now there were five bottles filling the spaces on the table that were left by the books, and one in Apollo's hand.

"This is bad," he said. Trucy snorted.

"A bit, yeah."

"So Edgeworth has some sort of corruption in his past? And Phoenix knows about it?"

Trucy snatched the beer from Apollo's hand and took a long swig before passing it back. She didn't often drink underage, but tonight was one of those nights when law didn't exist in the sanctity of her home – much like Jasper Stone, she thought glumly. "Apparently."

"And Kay showed herself to Edgeworth, who now knows she's the Yatagarasu and probably suspects that there are two others working with her." Apollo's eyes were heavy with exhaustion but wide with anxiety.

"Yep."

"Pearl needs to get out of town," Apollo said quickly, picking up his cell phone as though he intended to call her. "She needs to lay low for a while, maybe go to Hazakura, let Edgeworth's suspicion die down. She can work from there, right?"

Trucy put her hand over her brother's and pressed his hand back to the table. "She will, but we promised Dad we'd go out for breakfast tomorrow morning. You should come," she added brightly, eyes glinting mischievously. "I'm sure Pearl would love to see you."

He threw a bottle cap at her.

"Shut it, you meddling fiend. We're on your problems right now, not my love life."

But he did agree to join them for breakfast, and soon the siblings were heading into their bedrooms – leaving the kitchen in its messy state for Trucy to clean in the afternoon. Despite the enormity of the events unfolding around them, both Grammarye children managed to fall asleep almost instantly, blissfully unaware of what was to come.

..m.i.s.s.i.o.n.s..

At 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, November 19th, Phoenix Wright and Pearl Fey were awoken by a loud, insistent knocking on the door to Wright's office/apartment. Phoenix, not a morning person by nature, grumbled and growled his way to the door while Pearl poked her head in from the guest room, curious.

"Who would be at the door this early?" she asked as Phoenix dragged his feet sluggishly over the carpet.

"No idea." He pulled open the door and barked "What do you want?" before he'd even seen who stood on the other side. When his eyes adjusted to the light of day and to the sight before him, they widened in shocked confusion. "Wait. What's going on...?"

The hulking man in the doorway looked distraught as he held out a folded piece of paper to the attorney, his green trench coat waving with the motion. Phoenix took it, looking for some sort of answer in the visitor's eyes as he unfolded the document. He read it slowly, obviously not believing what his eyes and mind were clearly telling him.

"What's going on?" he demanded again, more insistently this time. "What is this?"

Pearl stepped into the hall, tugging a housecoat on over her pyjamas. "Nick? What is it?"

The man in the door looked from Phoenix to Pearl and back again, his expression apologetic. "It's a warrant, sir," Dick Gumshoe explained. "For the arrest of Pearl Fey."

Pearl's eyes went wide. "What?" she gasped, but Gumshoe had already pushed past the frozen Phoenix to take the young woman's arm and gently handcuff her wrists together in front of her.

"Pearl Fey," he began, sounding doleful as he led her from the apartment, ignoring her protests. "You are under arrest for theft, releasing private documents to the press, and unlawful destruction of evidence..."

Phoenix watched them go, his mind blank and body numb. It was only after Gumshoe's voice and Pearl's cries of "Nick, help!" faded from the hallway that Phoenix noticed there had been another visitor.

Edgeworth stood in the doorway, arms folded and expression stern. Phoenix flew at him, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking hard, trying to dislodge his friend from the monster who had just arranged for sweet, innocent, adorable Pearls to be led away in handcuffs.

"What the hell are you doing, Miles?!"

Edgeworth broke from his friend's grasp with ease and grinned humourlessly. "I know who the Yatagarasu is, Wright. Pearl has to be part of it. There are no other options."

"But Pearl is innocent!" Phoenix shouted. "She's not stealing! She's not responsible!"

"I know." Edgeworth turned his eyes to Phoenix, and the defense attorney was shocked by the hard, cruel edge to his gaze. "But I know who is. And I'm going to smoke her out."

a.n.

This doesn't look good, does it?