"You can't run forever, Mr. Apollo Justice!"
The booming voice startles him enough for him lose his footing, tripping forwards to land painfully on his chest. The Mace, his last remaining weapon, flies out of his grip, landing a few feet away, completely out of his reach.
Panting and pushing himself off the grass, he attempts to get up again, but his entire body is silently screaming in protest. His armour, worn for his protection, is now what weighs him down. Every single muscle inside him is on fire; his legs in particular refuse to cooperate, after running in bursts for a solid half hour, and he finds himself unable to move.
He's completely vulnerable.
The ground shakes almost rhythmically as the enemy approaches, having slowed down upon seeing that their target has been immobilised. Their awful collective laughter sends ice down his spine.
Apollo clenches his gloved fists, willing himself to budge. But he's battered and worn from the prior battle. Within his vision, his forearms are dappled with bruises and patterned with cuts. His arm bandages — desperate, pathetic attempts at protecting his arms from further injury — had long been torn off by those… by those monsters. He'd been lucky that they'd yet to rip anything else away from him.
Especially the Mace. It's ridiculously heavy (allegedly made of diamond; he hadn't believed it until he'd carried it himself) and the strain it puts of his battered arms are enough to draw tears from his eyes, but the fate of the entire world depended on him bringing the legendary weapon back to its rightful owner; the only one who could use it. The hero, Phoenix Wright, who would use the Mace to bring peace to the land once more...
The thumping gets nearer, louder.
Tears sting his eyes, and they evade his attempt to blink them away, soon falling freely in streams down his scratched face. He couldn't reach Mr. Wright. He can't even stretch his arm far enough to reach the Mace. He was going to die, alone, and will have failed everyone.
The only reason he had even survived up to this point was because of Trucy's sacrifice. Of all his friends' sacrifices...
"Polly!" Determined eyes flashing, the young magician brandishes her wand from her seated position as Mr. Hat does the same with a silver katana. She gives him a backwards glance. "You need to get the Mace to Daddy! We can't defeat them!"
"Trucy…! I'm not leaving you behind!" Apollo tightens his grip around the glowing battle mace, taking Trucy's side. "You can't even walk! And we were going to finish this quest together, remember?!"
She bites her lip at that, though her eyes never leave the approaching infantry ahead of them.
"I…"
"I can't lose another partner," he chokes. His mind flashes to the brutal end of Athena at the hands of the accursed enemy. All that was left of her were his memories, and those were now seared deep into his heart forevermore. He'd sworn to the heavens to never forget her, and he knows Trucy feels the same. She'd been there, and she'd promised the same thing. "You understand, don't you, Trucy?"
She continues to remain silent as the cackles of the enemy grow louder, though he notices the slight furrow of her brows. Just what is she thinking?
The enemy is close enough to discern the individual bright colours of their surreal, bulking forms. The shaking of the ground intensifies, and he fights to keep his balance.
Apollo knows the both of them are outnumbered by an innumerable margin. He knows that Trucy can't run anymore, not with the shattered bone in her left leg, and that his own body could barely carry his own weight at this point. He knows that the chances of them surviving are slim to none.
But the thought of leaving Trucy here, alone...
"So no matter what you say, I'm not leaving!" Apollo manages to crack a grin, readying himself to swing the mace at anyone who gets too close. Even if they died… no, he couldn't think like that. "We'll beat them togeth—"
It's too fast. One moment, he's ready to die fighting by Trucy's side, and the next, Mr. Hat's grabbed him by the sides, picked him up with surprising strength and tossed him away like a rag doll a ways away from the enemy frontline.
"AAAAHHHHHHH!"
He lands on the sloping ground in a painful heap, only to start rolling down the side of the shallow hill. Shielding his face, he manages to crash into a shrub near the bottom. The Mace rolls down after him, getting caught in the same bush.
His head is swimming, and with the ground shaking as if there was an earthquake, he feels like he's about to fall unconscious. His entire body had been bruised before, but now any part of his skin left untouched had definitely felt that trip down the hill…
"RUN, POLLY!"
"T-Trucy!" Scrambling to his feet, Apollo grabs the Mace once more, only to look up and see Trucy disappearing into the mass of giant, sword-wielding Fruits—
"NOOOO!"
The Fruits that had surrounded him were taken aback at the fallen human's sudden screech, their horrid laughter dying away for a moment.
In his line of sight, Apollo can only see their multicoloured bases, but they couldn't be anything else other than the Fruit fresh scent of lemons fills his nose, but the lethal nature of the gas does not shake his new resolve. Curling his hand into a fist, he slams the ground.
All the rage and sorrow that had built up inside of him all this time had finally bubbled to the surface, overpowering any sense of doubt or hopelessness that had overcome him prior. Apollo forces himself up on his arms, the exertion causing him to let out a pained scream.
His friends died so that he could live… so that he could finish the journey they all had started together… so that he could save the world from the Fruit apocalypse.
And he can't let their deaths be in vain!
The Fruits surrounding him are, for once, silent, observing him curiously. At any moment, they could choose to raise their swords and slice his head clean off, but he doesn't care. He has to get to Mr. Wright. He has to end this. For the sake of all his friends.
(Athena, Trucy… I'm doing this to avenge you!)
Taking a deep breath, Apollo lunges for the Mace. The Fruits let out a gasp, and from among the crowd, a rowdy apple swings its sword right at his head—
—but Apollo barely blocks the swing in time, holding the Mace with two hands.
"I'm going to kill all of you," he seethes, eyes red, "I'll kill as many of you as I have to! You'll never win, Fruits!"
At that, he shoves the sword away, gets to his feet and begins swinging the Mace around in a wild frenzy. The spiked end of the Mace makes contact with a couple Fruits, ripping away entire chunks of their fruity flesh away. Their horrified screams pierced the sunset sky as the circle of Fruits surrounding him began to back away in terror. They were laughing no more, Apollo noted victoriously to himself.
It's as if a new power has begun to surge through his veins. He notices that, between swings, that the Mace is glowing brightly. It's no longer heavy in his grip; in fact, it's about as light as a paper, allowing him to attack the Fruits with his full strength.
Perhaps the true hero the Mace was meant for was no longer Phoenix Wright. Perhaps, Apollo thought, times have changed, and that the hero of the Second Fruit War was to be a different person entirely…
x
"…You weren't kidding."
Athena sneaks another peek into the bathroom, only to look away again, worried. "And how long has he been like this?"
While Pearl is still chewing at her thumb now, she's nowhere as distraught as she was before, when she'd called Athena on her cell, begging her and Trucy to come to the Agency as fast as possible. "I-I don't know! When I came in to the office to clean, h-he was already in there, screaming!"
"That's freaky!" Widget blips.
"Maybe we should've invited Polly with us after all." Trucy taps her chin thoughtfully. With Apollo having been acting like this for upwards of five minutes, the initial shock and fear had worn off, leaving mostly confusion. "He said he didn't want to go to Gatewater Land, and that he had work to do, but maybe he did want to go after all?"
Pearl sighs. "Poor Apollo must've been so lonely! No wonder he's having a nightmare in the bathroom…"
"I don't know, is he even asleep?"
Athena shakes her head. "Well, he hasn't responded—"
"TAKE THIS FRUITS! YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!"
Apollo's hoarse screech cuts her off, startling all of them. Trucy takes a peek inside this time; Apollo is still writhing on the bathroom floor, swinging around the toilet scrubber and screaming incoherently. She's surprised his throat hasn't given out yet, but then again, his Chords of Steel training wasn't for nothing...
"Should we tell Mr. Nick about this?"
"No, it's a Saturday, and Daddy's finally got some time off to spend with Maya." The magician whips out her magic panties and pulls out a colorful length of handkerchiefs tied into a rope, smiling mischievously. "How about we tie him up and use the Mood Matrix to solve The Mystery of the Screaming Polly ourselves?"
"Quelle bonne idée! What say you, Pearly?"
"That sounds fun!" Pearly claps her hands. "I'll go get some cut fruit as snacks!"
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