A Million Petty Annoyances - It's not easy being the chief prosecutor, especially when you don't really understand how things work.
AN: I know the timeline doesn't work, it's just a silly thing. For the Phoenix Wright kink meme.
Chief Prosecutor Unwyn Sless sat in his car in the underground parking lot beneath the Prosecutor's Office and wondered what was going to go wrong for him today. Back in his home country his luck had never been this bad, but all of last week, things had just been going... wrong.
Monday, he'd been stopped in the hall for a chat by Prosecutor Godot. The man was easy enough to talk to, but he insisted that Unwyn drink coffee while doing so. Which hadn't been a problem until Unwyn spent the next four hours on the toilet.
(Godot insisted that he wouldn't stoop so low as to lace the dark, bitter delight that is coffee with anything, it was just that some people couldn't handle the strength he was used to. And the fact that he'd been assigned on a case against his former employer, Attorney Grossberg, had nothing to do with the extra-strong brew.)
Tuesday, Unwyn had caught Prosecutor Edgeworth on the way in and started what would hopefully be a long conversation about the next cases Edgeworth would be handling. Unfortunately for Unwyn, Edgeworth didn't even look at the elevators and instead started climbing the stairs. All twelve flights.
After getting winded by the third story, Unwyn made the mistake of asking Edgeworth why he didn't take the elevator. The resulting sob story made Unwyn take Edgeworth off all the cases he'd intending on putting him on and promise to give him his choice of any case he wanted.
("It wasn't as though he was going to let me anywhere near a difficult case otherwise," Edgeworth said to Franziska later, "Apparently he thinks that I've been doing nothing abroad and wants to ease me back into things gently.")
Wednesday, Unwyn made the mistake of interrupting Prosecutor von Karma when she was talking to someone on the phone (specifically, he wanted to know who exactly she was talking to, since the number of outside calls made by von Karma had increased significantly over the past month). Instead of putting the other person on hold, von Karma didn't break the flow of her conversation as she made it clear that her whipping skills were as good as ever.
Unwyn thought that there surely had to be some kind of rule against whipping the chief prosecutor, but he didn't want to bring it up while he was still within whip range.
("If such a foolishly foolish fool believes I, the prodigy, cannot get my work perfectly finished and talk to whomever I wish at the same time, he brings such a punishment upon himself with his foolhardy foolish actions," Franziska told Adrian, the phone clamped between her shoulder and ear while she signed off a document.)
Thursday, Unwyn had made it to lunch without a single incident. He was getting very nearly hopeful that today was going to be fine when an earsplitting racket started up. Shoulders slumped, Unwyn made his way to the source of the cacophony.
Prosecutor Gavin's office was rather centrally located, yet Unwyn didn't run into anyone else on his way there. It took several minutes of knocking on the door and shouting for Gavin for the noise to cut off and Gavin to stick his head out.
In exchange for more flexible working hours, Gavin agreed to stop his band from practicing in the prosecutor's office. Unwyn made his way back to his own office with his ears still ringing and seriously considering Gavin's request for a soundproof office.
(Down the hall, Godot took off the noise-canceling headphones he'd been given that morning and decided that Klavier was owed at least two cups of coffee.)
("He's acting like being young means I have to be told when to go to bed," Klavier groused to his band just before they plugged in the amps, "'Get here on time.' 'Hand in your case files.' Achtung, it's enough to make you go mad.")
Friday, Unwyn spent a good ten minutes staring at a conversation happening between Prosecutors Godot, Edgeworth, von Karma, and Gavin. He wasn't imagining it, they weren't speaking English.
Von Karma, Unwyn knew, had grown up in Germany, and Gavin threw out random German all the time, but Godot and Edgeworth speaking fluently? Unwyn wished he knew what they were talking about, but he decided against asking when he noticed that von Karma still had her whip.
Unwyn hoped that he could find an English-speaking prosecutor to hand off this incredibly easy case to.
(In actuality, Godot had been speaking Spanish, Franziska German, and Klavier had been mashing up every random foreign phase he knew. Edgeworth had been translating between Franziska and Godot and telling Klavier off for giving him a headache. It had been staged so that none of them would get the case with the obviously-innocent suspect.)
After last week, Unwyn was seriously considering not coming in. But he was chief prosecutor, he couldn't set a bad example for his subordinates. It was a new week, things should start looking up. With one last deep breath, he opened his car door...
...only for it to be torn off by another car parking next to him.
"Oops," Prosecutor Payne said, barely looking sorry, "Must be these ancient glasses of mine. It's been difficult waiting for a new pair to be made after that witness you assigned me knocked my old ones off."
Chief Prosecutor Unwyn Sless rested his head on the steering wheel and wondered if they'd miss him if he transferred back to his home country.