"What are you doing?" An angry, booming voice came from behind her suddenly and it sounded really nearby. Jolted out of her concentration, Ema spun around quickly, straightening from the squatting position she was in. Flashes of glint blinded her for a second and she blinked, slowly adjusting her eyes.
"Who or what gave you the permission to touch my Besitz, kleines Mädchen?" Her sight restored, she now learns that the offender was a man donning much more reflective materials than should be legal on anyone. Decked out in all black aside from the metal janglings, even his blond hair glowed. Just as she had deduced prior, he was standing close. Too close, in fact, that she should have heard him before he announced his own presence. Clearly she had been too absorbed with fingerprinting the stage equipment, fuelled by the joy of not having anyone around to stop her…until now.
"Your buhzits?" She couldn't place the accent at first, except that it clearly wasn't local, but when he spoke the language she realised it was German. That did not, however, mean she knew what the words meant.
"My belongings. Keep your hands off my things, ja?"
"Your things..." Ema looked back down at the glossy burgundy drums she had been touching. Ah, of course the glinting objects on the stage belonged to him. Heck, with the way he was reflecting light, he might as well be a walking strobing flashlight.
"Sir, unfortunately, this is a crime scene. Everything here is subject to police scrutiny." She gestured with her hand to imply all the structures in the stadium, or rather what little there was of it, was in her jurisdiction. Honestly, for a stadium in a theme park it was really rather modest, bare except for the stage and the bleachers. Unless of course, you counted the two birds currently fixated with the ground as part of the scene, but even then they didn't count for much.
"But you are not an officer, are you now, kleines Mädchen? Or is this a game of pretend where you expect everyone to go along with you?" He leaned back slightly, looking down his nose at her. Or so she assumed; he was wearing shades so she really couldn't tell where his eyes were looking. He clearly towered over her and Ema hated feeling short in situations like these; it made her feel undermined.
"Excuse me?" So fine, she might be overstepping her bounds in the legal manner of speaking, but she was called here by Detective Gumshoe to help Mr. Edgeworth out! That should grant her enough rights to move about the scene dusting for prints! "I have immediate permission from a detective involved in this case to help with the investigation!"
He didn't deign to reply to her outburst, only moved across the stage, looking over the speakers she had been dusting over earlier.
"Tch. You've gotten white powder inside. It will affect the sound."
"I apologise for the mess. I'll clean it up later before I leave." How dare you 'tch' at me? She thought of countering his rebuke since she was doing so for the sake of the investigation. But since it was true that she did get fingerprinting powder over his things, she was willing to admit her mistake, step back and offer an olive branch. Except he didn't take it.
"I don't take too kindly to anyone messing around with my music and especially not my set-up."
"So what do you expect me to do?!" If he was looking for a fight, she wasn't about to back down. She's already tried playing nice but two can play at that game if he's intent on making a fuss.
"Nothing! I'd rather you just not touch anything of mine anymore, kleines Mädchen 'Detective'." The irony was as subtle as Officer Meekins's megaphone-screeching. "Do you know how easy it is for these to be damaged by manhandling? Or how expensive these are to replace?"
"Sir, I repeat. This is an area of investigation. No matter how expensive your instruments are, nothing will match the importance of finding the necessary evidence for a murder case!"
"Oh? And what fingerprints would there be at a crime scene from a victim and killer in suits?"
"Well, you never know! The murderer could have gone on stage and taken off his suit!" If Ema's learnt anything from past experience, it's that a proper investigation should be thorough and involve sweeping every nook and cranny, considering even the impossible to be possible until hard evidence proves otherwise.
"And touched the equipment after taking off his suit?"
"Yea—Wait. How…did you know they were in suits?" Perhaps there was more involvement to this man than simply 'He was a performer for the day in Gatewater Land' after all.
"I believe I would have more information about a case than someone playing make-believe detective…as a prosecutor."
"You're a what?!" She blinked in shock, but didn't have enough time to process this new information before an intruder popped up below stage.
"Gavin! You're needed at the meeting before they're willing to release our set-up!"
"Got it!" He yelled back at the other guy before the person disappeared as quickly as they had suddenly appeared. "I have to leave now, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you would just keep your hands to yourself while I'm gone."
'Prosecutor Gavin? He's a new addition to the Prosecutor's Office. He just joined last month and is currently shadowing the Chief Prosecutor. Why, is there something wrong with him? I apologise for the late reply.', read the text that pinged her phone.
'No, it's fine, Mr. Edgeworth.' It was just like him to text a full paragraph as opposed to the one-line texts she had fired off at him earlier. He was probably really busy with the case at hand. She knows he would have picked up if she had called, but this wasn't really anything urgent and she really didn't want to make a big deal out of it. Though she really did want to reply with 'Everything is wrong with him', she settled for 'Nah, it's just I wouldn't have pegged someone like him for a prosecutor.'
'Ah, met him in person at the crime scene, did you? He's quite impressive, really, becoming a prosecutor at 17.'
"HE'S YOUNGER THAN ME?" Ema let the phone she had been using to quiz Mr. Edgeworth about the nefarious boy—as it's now been made clear—drop. For all of 17 years that he was, he looked nothing the part. Drats, she looked more like the child next to him. The jerk face even called her 'kleines Mädchen'; a quick search taught her it meant 'little girl'.
"Ugh I even called him 'sir'." She crushed her face into her pillow in humiliation. She prayed with every fibre of her being that she would never see him again. Shame was much more easily dealt with—shoved away and forgotten—when you don't have to face the subject that caused said shame. Except if she wanted to be a forensic investigator, there was no luck in the world that would help her avoid crossing paths with a prosecutor in the same city.
"And I can't believe he's a prosecutor at that age. The world is an unfair place." She complained into the pillow.
"If you're a rock star, just STAY as a rock star! What business have you going around being a prosecutor too?! You don't even look the part of a prosecutor!" She flung the pillow against the wall, hoping the harmless act of violence would dissipate the embarrassment. It didn't. "Okay, look, Ema. It's not so bad. Maybe he will later realise that he likes being a rock star more and quit, or he'd just grow bored of crime investigations. There's no guarantee he'd still be a prosecutor when you're a forensic investigator. Yes, that's right. There's no point in worrying about something in the future. He'd probably suck so much as a prosecutor that he'd be dismissed."
At this point in time, what Ema didn't know was that there was no way fortune would shine so kindly on her in this hope of hers.
I figure with the amount of diva-ness Klavier had when it came to his music and his younger self being less mellow on the rude side, younger him would be just flying off the
handle when his equipments are messed with. So 'janglings' isn't an actual word, I made it up based on the idea that Ema is probably someone who invents words as she
liked. I'll try to explain things that aren't already explained in the fic itself so that you don't have to google to look up the meanings of things you don't know. So for now,
Strobing flashlight: a tactical flashlight that brightly flashes at irregular intervals to disorientate a target. This has been used alongside with weapons as a non-lethal way of
taking down an opponent.
I live and breathe Klema, started a comic on them (which hasn't progressed anywhere emotionally unfortunately because drawing takes way too long) and now I've decided I need emotional development quickly, so since writing is much, much faster...this is now a thing. I hope my writing is at least bearable if not good!