There were many things that the nine-year-old Miles Edgeworth did not understand. Why grown-up women wore makeup, for example, or preferring westerns to old legal dramas on late night TV. On the whole he was a very bright kid, but his understanding of the typical social practices of his peer group was somewhat…lacking. Interestingly enough, though, Miles Edgeworth's two best friends were about as 'typical' as it was possible to be for a nine-year-old boy.
Which was why Miles was holding a plastic controller, sitting on a questionably sanitary couch in Larry's basement, trying to pick between an electrically powered rodent and an anthropomorphic birdman…thing. Life was very strange sometimes.
"Come ON, Edgey, just pick one! Pikachu or Captain Falcoln? Hurry up!"
"I'm just not exactly sure the criterion for what makes someone good in this game, Larry." Miles sniffed, thinly veiling his impatience with his less-than-understanding friend, Larry Butz. Larry shrugged his shoulders, carelessly.
"I still can't believe you've never played this, video games, Edgy. I mean, what do you DO when you're at home with no friends around?"
Miles blushed. Larry didn't know that before he and Phoenix came around, almost all Miles' afternoons had been spent sans friends. It was just hard for him to relate to kids "his own age"…
"Ah, give him a break, Larry. Some people actually like to read for fun, you know." laughed Phoenix Wright, the third of the trio, and mildest of personality. It was Phoenix's 'trial' in school that had brought the three of them together, which cemented the friendship in ways they would only come to realize many years later.
"No way, Nick, really? You read for fun? You're such a dooooooork!"
Miles laughed softly as Phoenix sputtered indignantly that it wasn't him he was talking about, while Larry jumped up and down on the couch like a monkey, pointing at him and chanting, "Nick is a ne-rd!" over and over.
"Phoenix, you tell me which one to pick." He said abruptly. Phoenix heard him, and immediately stopped yelling at Larry to shut up.
"You want me to choose?" Larry stopped jumping around and shouting, too, at these words. "For you? Me?"
"Yes. That's what I said." His friends stared at him blankly. "What???"
"Dude, Edgy, you NEVER let someone else make a decision for you. This is like,…unpresidented."
Miles normally would have corrected the vocabulary-inept Larry on his word choice, but he was too busy staring at Phoenix, who was staring at him with a rather…proud look on his face. He did not realize what the pride meant.
"You want me to…choose your character for you?" Phoenix asked, with a hint of hopeful disbelief in his voice.
"Yeah, I mean…I trust you, Phoenix."
The pride on Phoenix's face (and in his chest) swelled inordinately.
"Okay, then! Well, since you've never played the game before…I would start with Pikachu. I mean, I think he's the easiest."
Despite his misgivings at the little creature's appearance (and Larry's teasing), Miles dropped his "Player 3" icon onto the square with the yellow rat, and the game commenced.
"You two ready to get your butts handed to you?" Larry asked, basking in the idea that in this one thing he might be better than the other two.
"I think our 'Butz' might already be right here, Larry."
Phoenix laughed and Larry scratched his head. Miles figured it was good to get one smart, "Miles Thing" in before they commenced this travail into the unknown world of "Super Smash Bros."
No matter how hard he tried, Miles's fingers could not comprehend the difference between the "jump" button and the "attack" button (he was not even attempting to learn the overly complex combos that Larry had haphazardly explained to him). Every time he had gotten his bearings enough to see that Phoenix (a fierce little swordsman dressed in green) or Larry (the pink thing that ate things) was close enough to him to attack, he would press the button to send out the logic-defying lightening bolt, but instead jump up in the air.
Giving Larry or Phoenix the perfect chance to strike him mid-air and send him flying off the cliff/castle ledge/weird space ship thing and into the sky with nothing but an artistic twinkle.
"Wow, Edgey, you really SUCK at this." Larry said for the twelfth time that hour. Miles gritted his teeth, muttering something about Larry's last math test. Phoenix laughed at Pikachu jumping in place five times, mostly because of Miles's increasingly competitive button mashing, grunting, and yelling at his character ("Stop jumping! Hit, hit him!"). This total lack of self-control, common in the average kid, was bizarre to see in Miles…and yet, Phoenix was glad to know he was capable of it. He glanced over at his friend every once in a while, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming Miles Edgeworth screaming at a "stupid, yellow furball".
Larry was good at this game. He was probably the most creative of the three of them, and the four hundred or so devious and sneaky ways in which you could send someone soaring through the air suited him well. Phoenix was proficient at the game, but luckily for him, Larry found Miles's over-reactions so funny that he continually targeted his less-experienced friend. It was so amusing, in fact, he did it about twelve games in a row, leaving Phoenix to concentrate on fending off the fourth character, the overhauled plumber Luigi.
After about two hours of the game, the ever-adaptive Miles was actually starting to get pretty good at the game. Miles, Larry and Phoenix were all standing up—Miles had a habit of moving his hands with the controller's joysticks, and he kept literally plowing into the other two. They all and subconsciously decided it was better to stand anyway, because it lent the act of playing video games a less mind-numbing, more animated feeling.
Even though it had stopped raining over an hour ago, they all pretended not to notice.
Now Miles and Phoenix were squaring off against each other.
"I've got you now, Phoenix Wright!" Miles laughed, triumphantly. Phoenix had learned more about Miles Edgeworth's love of winning in the last two hours than he thought he would ever have to know.
"Oh, yeah? Well…take that!" Phoenix pressed a random assortment of buttons at the same time, hoping for a killer combo and coming up with…nothing.
"You can't rely on random guesses to win! Do your research next time!" Miles forced his character to the edge of the cliff, confident that Phoenix would not be able to turn this around…again.
During the heated competition between the other two, Larry was plotting. He was an attention-monger by nature, so he could not stay out of the action for very long.
"Hey Nick, Edgey! What's that behind you guys?"
Both of them turned their heads around for the fateful half-second that allowed Larry to knock their controllers out of their hands and "kill" both Link and Pikachu. Phoenix scrambled to pick up his controller, while Miles simply trembled with the fury of a person who always takes things too seriously.
"You guys really are a pair…a pair of suckers!" Larry chortled at his own bad joke. Which was the final straw for Miles Edgeworth and Phoenix Wright. Phoenix's cure for Larry's laughter was to simply throw the controllers aside, stride past Miles and lunge at him, tickling like crazy. Larry tickled back, in retaliation.
"Both of you stop it! Your behaving like…like…" Miles struggled for a word that wasn't "kids" or "children".
Larry and Phoenix both stopped, grinned at each other, and lunged at Miles. An all-out tickle war erupted, which mostly consisted of Miles running away and the other two chasing after him, finally catching him and finding his most ticklish spot (his left foot). In the end, it was a free for all, with raucous screaming and carrying on before the three of them collapsed on the couch, crying from laughter and exhausted. None of them could remember the last so successful afternoon spent in each other's company.
The only downside was that since they had not paused the game, the computer player had killed all three of them.