At Phoenix Wright's first ever Bar Association Christmas Party, the Gatewater Hotel's ballroom was warm and stuffy. It was filled with attorneys, court employees, and public defenders all sweating in their best clothes, determined to have a good time. They chatted together in groups, and the ballroom was filled to bursting with buffet food, large tables with cheap chairs, and lively conversation. Upbeat music played from a small stage at the end of the room, and in front of the stage, people were setting up a raffle table. Phoenix got his bearings before going inside.

Everyone seemed able to detect a newbie at twenty paces, but Phoenix was familiar with only a few faces. He received many friendly greetings as he tried to make his way to the buffet table, and smiled and waved as appropriate. Even the court clerks seemed to be in a good mood.

After filling his plate with free food, he ventured over to a group of public defenders who had interviewed him for a job the day after the bar exam results were distributed. Phoenix walked up to the group and waved, unsure if they remembered him.

"Phoenix Wright!" The oldest attorney of the group smiled up at him. The attorney's enormous glasses only seemed to magnify his smile as he squinted through them.

"Hello everyone, and happy holiday," said Phoenix. The group returned a hello.

"How are things at Fey & Co.?" asked the senior public defender. "Are they just as you expected?"

"Glamorous?" asked a man in a red bow tie.

"Well-paid?" joked a tall woman in high heels. Everyone laughed.

Phoenix nodded, grateful to them for dispelling his nerves. "Yes, all that, and more. I feel honored to have Mia Fey as my mentor." The group members nodded. "In fact, if it weren't for her, I wouldn't be here right now. I didn't know about this event until last week."

The senior public defender frowned. "Didn't you get the email?"

"Um, well… I don't own a computer. I only use the one at work."

The other man waved him closer, and pulled a notepad and pen from his suit jacket. Phoenix set aside his plate and sheepishly went over.

"My boy," he said as Phoenix scribbled his name and work email, "you're one of us now. We can't have you out of the loop."

Phoenix nodded, and returned the notepad and pen. "Does the same go for prosecutors? I haven't seen a single prosecutor's badge since I arrived."

The tall woman burst into laughter. "This one is sharp! How could we have let him get away?" Everyone laughed. Phoenix smiled, uncertain about what he had brought up.

"Oh, they get the email," the man with the red bow tie said. He rolled his eyes. "They get it every year. They just don't respond. And they never come." He looked to the tall woman. "I know you have a theory about why."

"It's not just a theory!" She punched a fist into her opposite palm. "I heard some careless new district attorneys talking about it. They were fighting about which symphony orchestra von Karma was going to hire, and speculating about his mansion!"

"I heard there was going to be a diamond jewelry exhibition," a woman in blue piped up.

"I heard those dessert chefs were going to be making the desserts, the ones from TV with the new show."

The group fell to indignant gossip about the snobbery of prosecutors. Phoenix listened while eating. He wasn't inclined to baseless conjecture. It wasn't that he discredited their experiences-as public defenders, they probably saw the most heartless of prosecutorial behavior-but that he didn't want to approach his career with any more bias than he already had. When the time came to deal with prosecutors, he wanted to approach them individually. Each person is unique , he thought, no matter what they are . Plus, he couldn't imagine Mia approving of such gossip. Oh, Phoenix, she would say. You know how lawyers love to talk.

"Speaking of that- hey, Wright?" said the woman in blue.

Phoenix looked up from his empty plate. "Yes?"

"Has Fey warned you about the Demon Prosecutor yet?"

"Casey-"

"Sorry, boss, but I think he has a right to know." She looked Phoenix in the eye. "Has anyone told you about him yet?"

"Uh, no." Phoenix looked around the group. Most of the members' gazes had fallen to the floor. "Is it… What is he?"

"He's a deformity of the face of the legal profession," the man with the bow tie said in a low voice. "He doesn't enforce the law. The law is his servant."

The tall woman leaned in closer to Phoenix. "You know that cold case that was reopened last week, and had a two hour trial last Thursday?" Phoenix nodded. "That was him. He got a fake confession out of someone he'd been detaining with no charges for three years. Then he used falsified evidence when the defendant got cold feet."

"And then Lana Skye had the nerve to call a press conference about all the great progress the High Prosecutor's Office has been making on cold cases!" hissed the woman in blue.

"Oh, they're all in on it," said the man in the bow tie. "But he's the worst. At such a young age! What we know isn't the half of it. I heard he still has people in the detention center that his dad passed down to him. He uses the witness compensation funds to bribe witnesses into telling lies they could never have come up with on their own. He won't rest until the defendant gets a maximum sentence."

The circle of attorneys was still, despite the noisy party going on around them. The senior public defender was frowning deeply.

"Who is he? What's his name?" Phoenix asked.

"We don't see him very much because he's highly selective about his cases. I know he's von Karma's boy," the woman in blue answered. "He came from Germany with von Karma a few years ago." She paused. "The first time I saw him was at a death sentence review panel his father was prosecuting. He was… so calm."

"But, uh, Phoenix," the tall woman interjected. "Don't let it worry you. He picks his own cases by hand."

"The perks of being a von Karma," someone scoffed. After the name left their lips, they swallowed tightly.

Phoenix looked around at the morbid gloom that had settled on the group's faces. "Well, thank you for the warning. I most likely won't encounter him soon, since I'm stuck with all the grunt work in the office for the foreseeable century." Some smiles appeared around the circle, and Phoenix could relax again. "I'll be sure to keep an eye out for him."

"You're a good kid, Phoenix Wright," said the senior public defender. He squinted up to make eye contact, and Phoenix was surprised to see steady, sharp brown eyes beneath his bushy grey eyebrows. "It would be better for you to stay out of… all that."

"Uh. Thank you."

"Hey!" The tall woman shook her head. "We all remember what it was like after we passed the bar- all those student loan payments and instant noodles in the pantry. Let the poor kid enjoy some real food!"

The mood lightened as the attorneys reminisced. "I put almost all my law books in the pantry because there was so much room," Phoenix joked. Everyone laughed, and the group broke up to make its way to the buffet table. Phoenix caught up to the man with the red bow tie and asked him every burning question he had about dressing for court. The man in the bow tie was eager to oblige.

Phoenix spent a happy evening with the public defenders, but said his goodbyes after the Bar's award ceremony, and declined their invitation to further alcoholic festivities. Glowing with good spirits, he rode the train home alone.

\\\

Miles Edgeworth lifted his hands from the keys and listened to the last chord die its quick death in the harpsichord. Silence fell in the music room. If he listened closely, he could hear the Christmas party taking place in the rest of the mansion.

He picked up the sheet music and was paging back to the beginning when Franziska von Karma entered the room. Miles, who had finally been feeling something resembling calm for the first time that evening, started at the noise and dropped the music book. It bounced off the delicate harpsichord keys with a discordant clang and landed on the carpet.

"Miles! Why are you hiding in the music room during Papa's one and only grand party of the year?" She closed the doors behind her and came closer. "If it's music you want, Papa has arranged for vocalists to join the professional symphony orchestra you may have noticed in the ballroom."

"I am well aware of the musicians in our house," said Miles. He leaned down to reach for the sheet music, but Franziska snatched it up first with a rustle of tulle.

"If you keep playing, people will think we keep a musician locked up in the back of our house," she said as she straightened back up. She was wearing a dark crimson crushed velvet holiday gown that was apparently designed to make her look like a doll, with a fitted bodice, full-length sleeves, frills at the wrists, puffy shoulders, and a truly baffling amount of tulle under a full skirt. Unfortunately, its stylistic sensibilities matched Miles' own holiday outfit and didn't seem to dampen her confidence in any way, so he elected to stay silent instead of striking back with the first comment that came to mind.

Franziska interpreted this as silent indignation, and raised an eyebrow. "Hmm." She flipped through the book to where Miles had pressed it flat to play. "What do we have here...William Byrd, Renaissance era… 'Pavana Lachrymae'? That hardly seems appropriate for the holiday season."

Whatever smug or pitying look was on her face, Miles didn't want to see it. He fixed his eyes on the harpsichord's ornately carved music stand. "Give me my book, please," he said calmly.

She replaced the book on the stand. "Miles, why not come out and enjoy the party? The circuit court judge Papa wanted to introduce us to is here."

"Thank you, Franziska. I will."

He slid out from the bench and faced his sister. She didn't move. Miles finally raised his eyes to hers and drew breath to ask what the delay was, but stopped when he met her gaze.

Franziska was looking up at him levelly, studying him. Her grey eyes were cool, neither soft with sympathy nor glittering with recognition of an exploitable weakness. Sensing a test or turning point of some kind, Miles stared back with what he hoped was equal frigidity.

Franziska smiled her confident smile. "Little brother. Your secrets are safe with me." She offered her velvet-covered arm for Miles to take.

Miles took it, and walked with her. He opened the doors into the hallway.

The whirling, glittering music of the Nutcracker Suite grew as they approached the ballroom. It was a cavernous, brightly lit space filled with rich decor and dancers in dazzling motion. Though the orchestra was on stage across the ballroom, he could hear their music vividly and clearly. Miles and Franziska stopped at the edge of the room, and silently observed the scene together.

The sound and motion grew as the orchestra came to the conclusion of Waltz of the Flowers. Miles lifted two champagne flutes from the tray of the first waiter who passed. He gave one to Franziska, and raised his glass to her.

"Merry Christmas, big sister."