Turnabout Detective

Investigation day 1-1

Phoenix sighed wistfully, the sound echoing around the empty corridor leading to the office. Days like this, back when he was in-between cases often turned out to be rather long ones, but this time it seemed especially lonely because he knew that nobody was waiting behind the door before him. Ever since the revolutionary events in the Kingdom of Khura'in Apollo has remained there, working together with Prosecutor Nahyuta to rebuild the legal system that the kingdom's false queen, Nahyuta's aunt, had all but destroyed in her quest for control.

Trucy and her mother Thalassa Gramarye (who had shed her guise of Lamiroir during Trucy's murder trial) were currently on tour which was doubling as a training session where Thalassa was teaching Trucy long standing (and, very nearly, lost) Gramarye secret magic tricks that haven't been seen in public for decades. This apparently was important enough that Thalassa had to accompany her daughter because many of them required such a specific use of the Gramarye power (which Trucy and Apollo both inherited) that details of them were rather sparce in Magnifi's diary.

As for Athena, she was currently taking a leave of absence from the firm. The reason she gave him was that her friend Juniper Woods had just graduated from the Themis Legal Academy, and Athena wanted to celebrate Juniper's dream of becoming a judge being made a reality. That's what Athena told him, but Phoenix believed the real reason was that she misses Apollo even more than he does (he wondered idly if Juniper felt the same, considering that she seemed to have a crush on Apollo the last time Phoenix saw her.)

Doing his best to shake off these depressing thoughts, Phoenix unlocked the door and walked inside. The office was as dark and as empty as he'd expected it to be, but Phoenix still found the sight incredibly depressing. The last time he saw it look like this was just after his case against Manfred Von Karma years ago, when Maya Fey had returned to her village to try to learn how to control her spirit-channelling powers.

For a moment Phoenix felt an urge to lock the office back up again behind him and hop on the next train to Kurain Village to see her (since she recently returned from her training in Khura'in to become a master.) However, even though he was not much older, Maya was such a child at heart that Phoenix felt like he needed to be the adult here, which means sucking it up and taking it. Besides, if Pearls found out she'd never let him live it down, and he was afraid that she would take his actions the wrong way and revert back to her old matchmaking ways (Maya barely got her off that by getting Pearls interested in clothes and shopping.)

With a sigh of resignation, Phoenix took off his jacket and tossed it on the couch behind him as he turned to the closet where he kept the supplies for cleaning the toilet. Before he could open it, however, Phoenix was startled by a high-pitched shriek, and he spun around to see a figure rising from the couch, flapping around wildly as they tried to free themselves from his jacket that seemed to be increasingly tangled around their face the more they struggled. Finally, with a heave Phoenix's unexpected guest dislodged his jacket from their head and hurled it to the floor panting, revealing the intruder to be a bespectacled young woman. In her early 30's or so and a bit on the short side, this young lady was neither unattractive nor was she threatening or imposing in any way. Regardless, there was a familiarity to her that filled him with both apprehension and pity towards her, a particular combination of emotions he generally only felt around his childhood friend who'd long ago earned the saying "When something smells, it's usually the Butz."

The woman blinked at him in blank confusion, then with a spark of confusion she exclaimed, "Oh! Mr. Wright, it is you! Thank goodness! When I first saw the office I was afraid that you had moved somewhere else and some magician had taken over this space."

You aren't that far off, Phoenix thought to himself as he asked aloud, "And you are...?"

The woman stared at him in blank confusion for a moment, then she snapped to attention and sharply saluted as she said, "Sir? It's me, it's Maggey!"

"Maggey Byrde?" Phoenix said in surprise, his jaw falling as he recalled why he felt uneasy around this woman.

"Actually it's been Maggey Byrde-Gumshoe for over two years now," Maggey corrected him still smiling though it looked to Phoenix like the smile had faded from her eyes.

"That's right, the wedding," Phoenix recalled aloud. It certainly was a beautiful ceremony, certainly more than the usually destitute detective could afford (apparently Edgeworth paid for it, probably to make up for all the times he cut Gumshoe's salary,) and Phoenix's financial situation in those days meant that he rarely turned down a free meal sincerely offered. However, Phoenix felt an awkward reluctance as he accepted the invitation, and judging by the monosyllabic responses he got in response to his attempts to be sociable with the groom Phoenix guessed Gumshoe felt just as awkward sending it THAT case was likely the cause.

Of course it wasn't the detective's fault (Gumshoe's testimony was about as "useful" to the prosecution as usual) and Phoenix certainly held nothing against him, but that case was still the one that cost him his badge, and they hadn't spoken to each other for an eternity since then. They'd seen each other once or twice, but each time Gumshoe would just stare silently at him for a moment with his sad, puppy dog eyes before hanging his head and marching off in the opposite direction. Phoenix figured that Gumshoe must've felt bad about what happened what part he had played in it, but Phoenix had his hands full trying to find a way to take care of both himself and Trucy to find an opportunity to assure the detective that he had nothing to apologize for.

At any rate, Phoenix had never encountered anyone quite as unlucky as Maggey here, her recent marriage notwithstanding (and Phoenix wasn't convinced that being hitched to Gumshoe was a sign of her reversal of fortune.) Since he'd met her around 10 years ago, this self-styled "Goddess of Misfortune" had been accused of murder three times that he knew of, though luckily he only had to defend her twice (the third time occurred in Edgeworth's office, and Miles managed to get her cleared quickly himself.) That alone wasn't proof of her bad luck, as Phoenix had recently cleared Maya of her fourth murder charge. However, by her own account Maggey had also had food poisoning countless times, taken quite a few bad falls, been hit by a good number of vehicles, and so on and so forth. Further more it seems as though her bad luck affected him too, as the first time she was accused he wound up getting struck in the head on the day of the trial and got temporary amnesia, while the second time he had to struggle to have her guilty verdict overturned after a shoddy defense from someone impersonating him (neither of which was fun.) Phoenix wondered if Miles had nightmares about his encounter with her, though Phoenix couldn't tell for sure as Edgeworth refused to say much about it during Gumshoe's wedding.

"So just how is old Gumshoe these days?" Phoenix asked her cordially. When he did, however, he was surprised as Maggey's face fell and she sat back down on the couch. As tears began streaming from her eyes, Phoenix noticed that her eyes were red like she'd been crying for a while. "Maggey?" Phoenix asked her in concern.

"It's all my fault!" Maggey cried out in her broken voice, "I should have never agreed to marry him, but Gummy was so sweet and kind to someone like me that I couldn't help it. And now he...he..."

Maggey then lowered her face into her hands and began sobbing openly, apparently unable to continue. Phoenix was confused. He couldn't imagine that big teddy bear dumping her or anything like that, so he asked her, "What's wrong, Maggey? Are you in trouble or something?"

"Not me, it's...it's Gummy," Maggey said with a hiccup, "He...he was arrested...for murder!"

Phoenix was stunned for a moment, his mind rejecting what he'd heard as if Maggey had been speaking a foreign language, then he exclaimed, "Say Whaaaaaat!?"