It's been some time. No apology is enough. A lot has happened to me since the last time I wrote any fanfiction. I'd like to think that means I've changed for the better. I've grown up some physically, at least (still a tiny tiny man, though). I'm definitely not done writing, and I've been doing a lot of it since I last posted, but none of it has been fanfiction, and I don't know how much more will be. I do have a few ideas bouncing around in my head, but they've been there for a while without anything getting on paper. Type. So just don't expect any sort of frequent updates and everything will be peachy. Up here in the AN is where I will be ranting on and on about the meaning of life and such; no more profile text. I hadn't originally planned to come back to this particular piece, but short vignettes like these seemed a good way to pick up fanfiction again. Cover images weren't a thing back then. Neither was Dual Destinies, come to think of it. There'll probably be more of this, depending on how many more good ideas I have (and, honestly, the reception- I'm vain like that). I do notice that the individual stories are somewhat longer than they were. That's probably reflective of a general trend towards increased verbosity in my writing. Dunno whether or not that means it's gotten better.

Chapter 2

"Hmph. You underestimate me, Wright," Edgeworth smirked, dancing the sizzling trout around his pan with surgical precision. Warm vapors of butter, parsley and lemon splashed from the stovetop, joining and mixing with the air of confidence he projected. "You cannot hope to win, not with your sad, homely dish. In my youth, the art of cooking was one of my few releases: this is the pinnacle of German cuisine, the pinnacle I have mastered!" With a flourish, he punctuated his statement with a flick of his wrist; the fish leapt into the air and completed three perfect spins before returning to the pan.

"Yeah, yeah. You can't even beat me in court, what makes you think food is any different?" To the prosecutor's left, unfazed and grinning, Phoenix stirred his curry methodically, his nose to the pot in order to better study the rich, familiar smell. Admittedly, compared to Edgeworth's fresh-caught trout and imported butter, Phoenix's powdered curry and store-bought vegetables were somewhat less dignified. But this was the curry he, Maya, and Pearls had talked and shouted and laughed over for so many years; the same curry that he'd come home from long nights of mindless piano to make together with little Trucy. The fond memories it held wouldn't lose to anything.

"I don't think, Wright, I know. But that doesn't matter- it's what they think." Edgeworth sliced up the still-sizzling fish with quick, precise swipes of his knife and ladled it carefully onto the plates he'd prepared. A chorus of delighted gasps greeted him as he presented the finished product to the dining table. Trucy licked her lips in anticipation.

Maya's drool was halfway down her chin before it occurred to her to wipe it away. "Man," she exclaimed, reaching gleefully for her portion. "If I'd known it was this easy to provoke you two into a cooking contest, I'd have done it a lot sooner!"

Pearl clasped her hands together as Edgeworth set her plate down. "Thank you, Mr. Edgeworth, this looks delicious!" The prosecutor smiled and nodded. "But doesn't it get hot, wearing your ruffles while you cook?" Edgeworth's smile evaporated.

Leaning back in his chair, Apollo called back to where Gumshoe waited over the sink. "You about done back there, Detective? Mr. Edgeworth's done, and it looks like Mr. Wright's nearly done, too."

Without turning around, Gumshoe flashed a thumbs-up to his back. "Just finished, pal!" When the detective had heard about Phoenix and Edgeworth's cooking duel, he'd eagerly turned the battle into a three-way contest, proudly touting his 'secret recipe.' As he gave his curry a final stir, Phoenix realized that Gumshoe had barely moved from the sink since he started cooking: the secret recipe probably wasn't as secret as Gumshoe thought it was.

The detective set a steaming Styrofoam cup before every person seated at the wooden table. "Check it out! Detective Gumshoe's very own secret recipe!" he announced, puffing out his chest proudly. Apollo didn't move, save for raising his eyebrows. Athena picked hers up, examining the cup as she turned it. Maya laughed and nearly swallowed it whole.

Phoenix joined them around the table, ladling the curry into rice-filled bowls as he eyed Gumshoe's creation skeptically. "Er, Detective- Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these just your normal instant noodles?"

Gumshoe's eyes narrowed, glinting. "Ho ho! That's where you're wrong, pal!" He reached into the breast pocket of his dirty old coat and withdrew a red plastic bottle that he shoved in Phoenix's face. "Check it out- hot sauce! I splurged just for this contest!"

"Gumshoe, I don't know if that really-" Phoenix began, but as he realized just what the detective was holding, his eyes widened. He and everyone around the table quickly turned to stare at Trucy, who gulped down her noodles happily. "Um, Trucy, how are you doing?"

"Great, Daddy! Everything is so good!"

Apollo looked her over with a combination of doubt and worry. "Sure, but hot sauce? Didn't you have a really low tolerance for spice? Last time we made curry, Athena accidentally bought 'mild spice' and you about broke down crying after one bite."

Characteristically, Trucy puffed up her cheeks in indignation. Apollo recoiled instinctively. "Polly, there's no way that was mild!"

"We showed you the box!"

"Well, maybe the factory got it mixed up!"

"The rest of us had it too, and we barely noticed a difference!"

Trucy turned away in a huff, slurping her noodles loudly. "Well, you don't have to be so mean about it, Polly! Some of us are just a little more delicate." Unable to come up with a logical retort, Apollo settled for likewise attacking his food.

Phoenix was satisfied, but eyed Gumshoe curiously. "She does have a low tolerance for spice, though. What's the deal, Gumshoe?"

Scratching the back of his neck, Gumshoe looked away in embarrassment. "Oof…" he mumbled. "To tell you the truth, pal, I only put one drop of the sauce in each cup." All eyes turned toward the detective expectantly. He turned, clutching the bottle to his chest and shielding it with his body. "What? This stuff is expensive, pal!"

The rapid slapping of Phoenix's sandals against the linoleum tiles echoed throughout the empty halls that he and Trucy raced through. "Come on, Daddy, we're gonna be late!" she exclaimed, clutching her oversized pink top hat to her little head.

"We're already more than late," Phoenix replied, half-smiling to himself. He followed Trucy through the bright labyrinth of hallways until she skidded to a halt in front of a reinforced wooden door that she cheerfully wrenched open. Pausing for a moment to catch his breath, Phoenix followed her into the classroom.

The first thing that Phoenix noticed about the room was that it was exceedingly noisy, with rowdy children bouncing up and down in their seats. Half of the parents were trying and failing to talk down their children; the other half were already seated comfortably in the back and chatting over coffee. Phoenix ducked under the macaroni sculptures hanging from the ceiling and made his way to where Trucy was talking excitedly with who seemed to be her teacher, a young woman with curly blonde hair.

"And here's Mr. Wright!" the woman said, smiling broadly as she extended her hand. "Trucy here talks about you all the time. She does so well in here! You must be so proud." Trucy beamed, quickly hugged Phoenix around his waist, and scurried off to her seat. Likewise, Phoenix made his way to the back of the room and pulled up a plastic chair meant for a much smaller person.

"Alright, kids and parents, your attention please!" the teacher announced. Surprisingly, the children all snapped forward in their desks and sat perfectly still. "I am so excited to have everyone here for our annual Parent Visitation Day! Welcome and thank you so much for coming, all of you! Why don't we start off by having all of our parents introduce ourselves, and maybe say a few words about our jobs?"

All around Phoenix, the parents stood up one by one, mostly women, some in pairs. As he stroked his chin, clean-shaven for the first time in weeks, it occurred to him that he probably should've worn something other than his sweatshirt and sandals, if only for Trucy's sake. Someone nudged him on the shoulder, snapping him out of his thoughts. He reached up to take off his beanie, at least, but as he felt the button that Trucy had sown on herself, he decided to leave it.

"Um…" he said, scratching at the bridge of his nose as he stood. "I'm Phoenix Wright, Trucy's father." The children all stared at him blankly, but as he said his name, more than a few of the parents around him gasped and inched away, evidently recognizing him from the news. "I… I play piano, down at Alden Tae's." He sat down hurriedly. The line of parents moved on.

The introductions gave way to the day's lesson. Most of the parents had notebooks and were scribbling furiously away. Phoenix tried to pay attention, but found himself startling awake two or three times during the lecture on the founding of Japanifornia. The math, at least, he understood, if only barely. In a couple years he'd be absolutely useless when Trucy came to him asking about geometry and quadratics and pi and whatever other math-sounding words that he could only vaguely recall.

Lunch break couldn't come soon enough. Desks scraped noisily against the floor to form groups that children and parents sat around together. As Phoenix moved his own seat, he noticed that a good number of the kids who didn't have their parents present were also moving to sit with Trucy. For better or worse, she was evidently quite popular with her classmates.

"You play piano, Mr. Wright?" a short, brown-haired boy asked him as he opened his Steel Samurai lunchbox. "So do I. My name's Thomas. A lot of kids call me Tom, and my mommy and daddy call me Tommy, but my real name is Thomas. I like piano. I've been playing piano for a year and a half now. My daddy made me do piano and I didn't like it at first but now I think it's really fun. My daddy plays piano too. He's really, really, really good. You're Trucy's daddy, right?"

"Yeah," he said automatically, his voice low. "You touch her and you die."

The children in the circle froze, as did Phoenix. Tom dropped his sandwich. Trucy put her hand to her face.

"H-Ha ha, I'm just kidding with you…" Phoenix laughed weakly. "You, uh, you guys should come over some time to play with Trucy. That'd be a lot of fun, huh?" None of the children moved a muscle.

Phoenix sighed and rummaged around in his pocket. "Hey, why don't I show you guys something fun, then? I'm actually terrible at piano, but this..." At 'fun,' the kids all forgot that they were terrified and leaned in eagerly.

Over the week, the school principal received more than a few angry letters from concerned parents that had overheard Phoenix and the children.

"Alright, Tom folds, Cindy folds, anyone else? Right. And here's the flop- six of spades! There's your two pair, Jack. But Michelle's got three of a kind, very nice! No, sorry Lucas, remember, a full house is a pair and a three. There's the pot, that's a bag of potato chips and a chocolate bar…"

"Haah!"

"Waargh!"

"Huh?!"

"Eeek!"

Phoenix bolted awake, flailing out wildly from under his blankets. The covers grabbed and twisted at his limbs as he struggled up; his efforts only resulted in him rolling off the couch and landing on the office floor with a noisy thump. Poking his head out from the undignified heap of cloth, Phoenix looked about the room wildly for whatever ungodly loud sound had startled him awake. Nothing in his office seemed out of the ordinary, save for Apollo and Athena, who hugged the wall opposite him wearing expressions of surprise and mild terror that must have mirrored his own

"…Boss?" Apollo ventured warily, slowly removing himself from the wall. "What are you doing here?"

With no small amount of effort, Phoenix managed to remove himself from the blankets. He stood and dusted off his pants. He realized that he hadn't even bothered to change out of his suit before nodding off; the last thing he could remember was groggily tossing his jacket in the direction of the coat rack before things went dark. "What do you mean, 'What am I doing here?' This is my office, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Technically it's Trucy's, but go on."

Phoenix shot the younger attorney a dirty look. Apollo pretended not to notice. "I was up working on the Gill T.N. case last night. It ended up getting so late that I just spent the night here." He cricked his neck, straightened his tie and vest, and meticulously ran his fingers back through his dark hair, making himself at least somewhat presentable to his juniors. "Now, your turn," he said, instinctively pointing his index finger at the two. "What brought you guys here so early? It's barely seven o'clock."

Crossing his arms over his chest, Apollo assumed his own signature pose. "I've been coming in this early since I started working here, Mr. Wright," he said, his horns parallel to his raised eyebrows.

Blinking, Phoenix realized that it was true that he'd always come into the office to find Apollo already hard at work. "Fair enough," he said, grinning sheepishly. "But I'm pretty sure I was having a great dream. What was that noise?"

"Chords of Steel, Boss!" Athena piped up, striking a ready pose with her hands balled into fists at her hips. "Apollo does this every morning, and I asked him to teach me some. Watch this!" She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, drawing breath through her relaxed body. Then, with a flash in her eyes, she thrust her fingers forward in rapid, alternating succession, punctuating each with a piercing shout.

Athena's haggard breathing was the only sound left in the void of silence that remained in the wake of her shouts. Apollo nodded in sage approval as the dust settled. Phoenix gaped, utterly dumbfounded.

"Well, Boss?" Athena asked Phoenix shakily. Her eyes were as strong as her voice was weak. "Pretty… Pretty sweet, huh?"

Phoenix removed his hands gently from where they had jumped to his ears. He rubbed at his eyes as he exhaled loudly. "Well," he managed, "at least we know why all our neighbors hate us."

Apollo frowned, his eye twitching. "Hey, this is serious training we're doing here." He stared at Phoenix. "Why don't you give it a try?" Athena's eyes lit up even more brightly at the suggestion. Phoenix backed away slowly.

Mia sighed, rubbing at her temple as she watched Diego take his seat at the bar, cheered on by a growing crowd of already-drunk patrons. "Mr. Armando, remember how this was supposed to be a nice, relaxing evening out of the office?" she asked him. "Please remind me why on earth you agreed to this."

Her senior grinned back at her with that devilishly handsome grin of his that she hated. "Male pride, Kitten. It's a man thing. You wouldn't understand." He tossed his vest to her and loosened his tie, letting out an animalistic roar that the crowd responded to with even louder cheers.

Unimpressed, Mia shook her head and resisted the urge to throttle him. "You don't even like beer! How do you expect to win a drinking contest?" Diego only laughed, confidently lining up the frothy mugs on the countertop before him.

Most of the men at the bar slid off their seats in defeat before finishing even one mug. Soon, only Diego was left against the big, burly man in the smelly leather jacket who had proposed the contest. In surprise, Mia first found herself wanting to join the crowd and cheer Diego on, but as mug after mug was emptied with few signs of stopping, she just wished for the contest to be over.

Diego was slowing down after his third, but was definitely still going. The other man was constantly looking over at his opponent, growing increasingly angry to see himself being outpaced. Anger alone, though, wasn't enough to sustain him, and the man slumped over the countertop as Diego slammed another empty mug onto the wooden bar with a victorious yell.

Mia tried to remain disapproving, but couldn't conceal her amazement as she helped him take slow, wobbly steps back to their table. His breath reeked terribly of alcohol, and by the way he wrinkled his nose and spat on the floor, he was evidently aware of it. "I'm still mad at you," she said, draping his arm over her shoulder. "It's a good thing we didn't drive here- that was way more than any human being should physically be able to drink."

"Yeah, well, emphasis on the 'human being,' which I'm not," Diego rasped cockily, rubbing vigorously at the side of his mouth. "It was easy."

She slapped him across the cheek, somehow more and less forcefully than she would've liked at the same time. She could feel her own cheeks heating up. "What are you talking about? You could've died!"

"No sweat, Kitten. All I did was pretend it was coffee. The really bad stuff, the glorified dishwater that Grossberg makes," he grinned. "Went down like an awful, awful charm." He spat again. "Seriously, why do people even make this stuff?"

Diego stared at Mia, and Mia stared back. For a moment, the air between them was silent, until Mia couldn't help but giggle, and soon the two could barely stay in their seats for their laughter. For a few solid minutes, they simply sat and laughed, utterly oblivious to the noise of the bar around them. "Really, Mr. Armando, you are an idiot," she managed to say as their laughter finally subsided, wiping a tear from her eye.

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled, a wide grin plastered over his reddened face as he closed his eyes and laid his head and arms down on the table. "I love you too, Kitten."

"W-What?" Startled, Mia didn't move, but she suddenly became acutely aware of her own body. Her heart was pounding against her chest, and her cheeks were burning hot; whether that was still anger, the drinks, or something else entirely, she wasn't sure.

Completely serene, Diego made no indication of having said anything. "For the last time, enough of the 'Mr. Armando,' Kitten," he said quietly. "Now help me to the restroom before I throw this swill up all over you."