Disappearing Act: Round 1

January 5, 6, 8, 2002

The second day that the desk under the San Andreas Fault - Where Is It? Where Are We? bulletin board was empty, Phoenix Wright, nine years old, got a funny feeling in his stomach. But he didn't call Miles after school, because there was a special on TV about sharks.

On the third day, he did call. He didn't invite Larry over, even though Larry was being kind of a pain about wanting to play Scimitar of the Shadow on the PSi. And no one was home when he let himself in with the key stuck to the back of the metal sun-with-a-face with a magnet. But no one answered the phone at the Edgeworths' (310-771-8262) either, except the answering machine with Miles's dad's voice on it.


"Why didn't you leave a message yesterday? We were only out to have dinner."

"Your dad sounds kinda mad on the answering machine."

"He's not mad. He's serious."

"He sounds kinda mad."

"He gets phone calls from lawyers. And clients. And the police. He has to sound businesslike."

"But can I still use your answering machine if the police use it?"

"Mmhm. You can."


He tried again a little while later, and just as he started dialing his mom came home. From the bag rustles and the sounds of bumping things on the counters, he knew she'd been to the grocery store. And when she came around the corner into the front hallway where the phone was, she looked surprised to see him holding the phone up to his ear and not saying anything, and she said, "Is someone on the phone?" And when he didn't answer, the way she didn't answer when he would come up to ask her questions while she was talking on the phone to somebody, she said again, "Nicky, who's on the phone? Let me talk to them-" and by that point Mr. Edgeworth's voice had come on and gone off and the beep had beeped, but he hung up to answer his mom. "I was calling Miles. He's not home though."

And she got a look he didn't understand. She said, "Sweetie, come sit on the couch."

And his dad came home a few minutes later, which was early.


He asked, "Can we adopt him?" And his mom looked at his dad, and his dad said Miles was already adopted. He asked by who, and it was another lawyer. And he asked where he was going to live, because he wanted Miles to still go to Serra Magnet and not private school or Sepulveda or something. And his dad said, he's going to Germany. His mom started to cry a little and said something under her breath and Dad turned to look at her and said something back and they started to argue and Phoenix scrambled back to the phone, where there was still no answer. And then he went back into the living room, where his parents were still muttering to each other, and sat down next to the bottom bookshelf where the books no one ever read were.

He wrestled out the atlas, and looked for Germany. And it only looked like a page away, until he looked back and saw Texas, where they'd been on vacation last year. Which had been days and days. And Texas was still a lot closer than Germany, even if you didn't count the ocean. And he got angry, and started to cry, and dragged the atlas over by the phone and called, over and over and over and over.


His parents kept him home the next day, but on Friday, when he went back, he was shooed out onto the playground at recess instead of being allowed to stay in when the teacher found him sitting on the floor to look into Miles' desk. All that was in it was a sharp pencil and a blue rubber band. He took both when she wasn't looking.

Out on the blacktop, he sat down next to a stucco wall and twisted the rubber band around the pencil. Twist, twist, twist, propeller propeller propeller until the last twist came undone and he'd have to catch the pencil before it hit the ground.

"Yeah, that was him, on TV in the police car!" A couple of boys from the other fourth grade walked up and stopped.

"Hey Nick. The teacher said Miles isn't coming back. I bet you're sad. "The boy looked kind of happy about it. "I bet you're REALLY-", he started to say, and Phoenix punched him. And he yelled, and his friend punched Phoenix, and the teacher and the monitor on yard duty had hauled them apart before Larry even got there.

And he was taken to the principal's office, which had never happened before. But he knew all about it from Larry, who was probably sent every two weeks. He was pretty sure, from all the stories, that it didn't normally mean that the secretary brought you a paper cup of water and looked like she felt sorry for you, and that the principal called your mom from the back office, while you sat on the bench in the front one, and didn't say anything TO you at all.

When he got home he left his math book in the car on purpose, and ran to the phone while his mom was out in the driveway again getting it back. But this time there wasn't even an answering machine anymore.


Disappearing Act: Round 2

March 17, 8:43am, 2017

Phoenix woke in his office, to what he too slowly realized was the ringing telephone. On its last ring, too, and the caller opted not to leave a message, so he was left awake but dazed at the lingering noise and the strange quality of the light in the room. He swung his legs down to the floor next to the office couch.

The weird light was in part due to the television, which had been left on, albeit with the volume all the way down. A Steel Samurai DVD menu was displayed, and the same clip of Will suited up and shouting and slashing an overdressed naginata down at the camera played on a loop on the left hand side.

That was right. The DVDs had been rushed onto the market in an admittedly tasteless attempt to capitalize on the scandal of the trial, and after a while Will had remembered Maya and sent a set to the office. And of course she'd wanted Nick to stop working right away and watch the whole thing with her, since she'd only been in town for a couple days and was leaving the next morning, and he'd insisted on finishing his paperwork first, and so the samurai marathon hadn't started until seven. And it had run until three in the morning, until Maya had realized that her train back home really did leave at six, and she hadn't yet packed or arranged for a cab. All in all it wasn't surprising that the disc had been left behind.

The rest of the curious light was coming in through the windows. It was one of those rare cloudy Los Angeles mornings where pale beams literally streaked through gaps in the grey cumuli, visible almost all the way to the ground. Pretty.He looked at the clock below the TV. 8:45 am. Not nearly enough sleep. But rather than the muzzy-headed and irritable kind of tiredness he was used to, he felt mostly wide-eyed and slow.

The phone rang again, and he answered, pleased that the words came out in the right order.

"This is Phoenix Wright."

Silence. He tried again.

"Good morning. This is Phoenix Wright."

A ragged voice on the other end. "Pal."

"Detective?" Gumshoe usually YELLED hello.

"Pal."

"Yes?"

"Pal. I think you need to come down to the Prosecutor's office."

Adrenalin burst in his abdomen. "What did I d-"

"It's not you, pal." The detective sounded glummer than Phoenix had ever heard him. Low indeed.

"Detective, can I do anything for you?"

"JUST GET DOWN HERE!" That stab of fury wasn't like Gumshoe at ALL, and the nerves that had selfishly quieted when he'd been told it wasn't him who'd screwed up lit up again, many degrees colder.

"Is Prosecutor Edgeworth there?"

"NO-" and the phone slammed down on the other end.

It hardly felt like the same room. Phoenix, still holding the receiver, told his inner monologue to not breathe a word, not one word. He got dressed, knotted his tie, called a taxi, and picked up the briefcase that the sudden twist in his stomach seemed to think might not be necessary. He rode through the strange grey-and-gold morning into downtown Los Angeles in the cab, allowing himself no thoughts beyond a shapeless and roiling concern. The gust of cold wet air on the concrete steps of the Prosecutor's Office, when he was deposited there, felt like a warning shot.

He shoved through the heavy wood-and-glass doors and jumped to join an elevator full of people headed to Edgeworth's floor. Why? Gumshoe hadn't mentioned a floor. This was just the one he'd always gone to before. The twist in his stomach told him that maybe he would have done just as well to wait for a different elevator.

Because something was going to hurt.

And despite the muzzle he'd put on his normal train of articulated thought, he was in the beginnings of a quiet panic by the time he got off of the elevator.

Edgeworth's door was wide open, which seemed wrong. So did the sounds coming out into the hall. Which was why, for a moment, the normalcy of the office itself filled him with relief. No yellow tape, after all, and no debris. Nothing that made it look like a scene, instead of a real place that was part of the normal scheme of things.

There was Gumshoe, though, sitting at Edgeworth's desk - and surely that was wrong. Edgeworth's rather shy secretary, whom Phoenix had the faint idea that he liked, was nervously leaning over the detective's shoulder, looking and pointing down at something and sniffling. Someone from the department with a lab coat and a badge was poking around. The curtains were closed. And Edgeworth wasn't there.

He very much didn't want to say anything. But the lab coat person said, "Excuse me, sir," and stepped over to open the tiny closet by the door. And that made Gumshoe and the secretary look up.

Except that Gumshoe was looking at him while the secretary looked past him into the closet first, strange, and then the former said, "Pal."

And his voice wasn't angry. It was dejected again, even worse than it had been when he'd called, and he gestured Phoenix over to the desk as the secretary walked away in that particular too-fast way with her head down. When Phoenix had taken her place, the big man lifted his hands up and away from a piece of paper, like a slow and helpless version of a magician saying voilà.

Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death.

It said. Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death, it said. It had been folded and unfolded and it said Prosecutor Miles...

"...what?" He hadn't even been aware he was speaking, and it came out jagged and breathy and not very loud.

"It was on his desk this morning, pal."

Phoenix remembered what Ema had said the first time he'd been in this office (3.23 seconds) and exploded away from the desk over to the window, pulling the curtains aside, kicking aside a vaguely familiar box that he didn't have time to think about right now, and feeling the glass. It wasn't broken. Which for a moment made him feel like he'd caught someone in a lie, and that it might all be okay, until what Gumshoe had been saying caught up with him.

"We did check the security cameras in the garage. He was here...early this morning, and then he left again. And he's not at his apartment. Or at the Von Karma house. But the car turned up at Dockweiler Beach, in the public lot with the driver's door hanging open..." And Gumshoe was looking at him like HE was supposed to solve it now, which was suddenly infuriating, and he spun on his heel and strode over and grabbed at the note. Only to have the lab coat person snatch it up from below his descending hand and seal it into a plastic baggie, and hand it back to Gumshoe, who handed it back to him. He pelted out the door and down the hallway.

The ocean and the grimy sand had probably looked very pretty under the gray clouds and the rays of sun. And Damon Gant, asking everyone about swimming.

Damn Gant. Damn Von Karma. Damn Edgeworth. DAMN Edgeworth. Damn Phoenix himself, for not anticipating, damn Lana, DAMN GANT, damn Los Angeles so beautiful under the dark clouds...

Damn Von Karma. Damn Manfred. Phoenix was in a mood to be an architect in Hell.

He remembered exactly nothing of his trip back to the office. The office, because going home would mean that the day had ended and history had recorded its events for good. He pulled the cord out of the telephone. Looked at it wide-eyed. Put it back. Turned back towards the couch, watched Will on the television jerk from the end of the clip back to the beginning and swing his blade down at the viewer. Saw a white cardboard box on the floor nearby, the one that Will had packaged his gift in, and recognized what he had kicked in Edgeworth's office. Kicked this one to pieces. Dropped onto the couch, and slept.

Late at night, he opened his eyes and saw something, through the doorway, on the floor in the front room. Something sort of red, with a shape he couldn't interpret. He looked down at it. Something resolved itself as a sleeve, and it was Edgeworth's jacket. He grabbed it and yelled, and it was heavier than he expected - it was soaking wet. And when he dropped it back onto the floor, he saw that his hand was as red as the fabric.

He opened his eyes again. It was late at night, and he was still on the couch in his slacks and jacket and dress shirt and tie. The door to the front room was closed. And it was grossly unfair to wake from a nightmare to realize that wakefulness was worse.

He'd had bad dreams during Edgeworth's trial, too - they'd be walking with Maya down a hallway or up a flight of stairs in the courthouse, or towards one or the other of their offices, or once even down the hallway of Building 2 at their old elementary school, and the grey-haired man would turn around as if he'd thought of something right then that he wanted to say, and then his mouth would open and his eyes would get big, and before he could get a sound out he'd drop into a great black gap that would have appeared in the floor under his feet. And he'd always fall too quick for Phoenix to be able to grab his arm and haul him back. Phoenix had woken up several times in mid-shout, with one arm stretched out.

Of course, it paled in comparison to murdering your father every night for fifteen years.

But there was the enormity of it. Von Karma's nightmare machine should have been broken. These were supposed to be the days in which things got better - but the future, as Phoenix had understood the future, was now a small and impossible figment lodged in the past. Without it, he didn't have any idea where he was supposed to go.

He fished a box of over-the-counter cold medicine out of a desk drawer and swallowed a dose, gulping it down with the help of one of the miniature bottles of water that Mia had bought in flats to have something to offer clients. He knew he wasn't sick - he just wanted to sink deeper than the dreams could follow. With that thought, a single perfectly clear moment of sympathy washed up like a Pacific wave, and his eyelids got heavy again.

Another three days went by. He didn't leave the office, didn't do much but sleep. He let the newspapers pile up on the front steps of the building rather than go down the stairs for them, even though the subscription was billed to Mia's office. He knew that if he saw Edgeworth's picture on the front page of the Times, he was likely to hurl the paper back like a missile at the carrier - even though the "paperboy" was a soft-spoken middle-aged man from Veracruz who drove a pickup truck. Phoenix had come by the office early a few days before Christmas so he could tip the man in person. He waited for Gumshoe to phone; Gumshoe didn't phone.

He finally went home when he realized how hungry he was, and that he smelled. The effort involved in gathering up the little water bottles and shreds of cardboard box felt literally Olympic, like something out of Greek mythology, and it took far longer than it should have. And it took him several minutes to gather up the nerve to put the note in its baggie into a folder. He opted to walk all the way home, because it still felt as though closing the apartment door behind him would finalize the last few days. The sun was brilliant, it was a Saturday, and it was nearly noon.

In the end, it wasn't closing the door that did it. The red light on his home answering machine was blinking, he saw as he entered, and he just shoved the door hard enough behind him for it to swing shut on its own and reached for the button. There was a message from Gumshoe, from yesterday morning. They had found nothing, they had stopped looking.

And Phoenix was alone in his apartment, while Miles was nowhere. Miles was alone in the Pacific. If that wasn't a thought to make you sick, a thought that could drive you to drink. But it was the realization that there was no reason not to call him Miles now that he'd gone that finally drove Phoenix to sit down at the table and cry, hopelessly, into his arms.


Nearly a week went by, and he reestablished his routine, but he hardly spoke to anyone. No one came to the office. He found himself staring at the strangest things - at cars, at birds, at plants, at the mailbox. He found himself wondering what the first thing he'd actually say out loud would be.

On Friday morning, as he opened the door to the office, it turned out to be "Hi, Mia." It was a whim born of sadness. The two rooms remained quiet, of course, and his voice had sounded funny, scratchy with disuse. But it was as if the mere act of speaking her name caused some dormant machinery in his brain to warm up. He felt almost anticipatory as he retrieved the mail, watered Charley, turned on all the lights. And when the little tasks were completed and nothing had come to him, he sat at the desk, Mia's desk, and turned the two words over in his mind.

Hi, Mia. Hi, Mia. Mia is dead. But I greet her. Hi, Mia. My mentor. I will always love you and respect you, always. Mia, hi, Mia. And it's not as though you don't visit, as if I can't speak to you for real if I -

He lunged forward and banged his knuckles getting the file cabinet open. He grabbed the baggie, shoved it into his coat pocket, turned the DVD player on and grabbed the disc out as soon as the machine responded to his commands, leaving the tray hanging open. He locked only the bottom lock on the door, tore down the stairs, ran outside. And just as he might have had to stop and consider what next, a yellow cab turned the corner and pulled up in front of the Gatewater hotel to let someone out. He pelted across the street, thumped the taxi's hood with one hand harder than he meant to, and told the driver, Union Station.

"You got any luggage, man? You scared me, banging on my car like that."

"No luggage. Sorry."

"It's okay...you in a real hurry, though?"

Tightly. "Yes."

"Okay, hold onto your, you don't got a hat. Hold onto whatever you got!"

A wallet, a ring of keys, a loose DVD, and a baggie.

The big Crown Vic made excellent if uncivil time, dropping him off at the main entrance on Alameda. And the electronic board above the ticket counter informed him that he wouldn't be lingering here, either; instead there was barely time to pay for his ticket and run, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the floor, towards the tunnel for the tracks. He didn't have time to think about what he was doing. He had a mental image of what he must look like to everyone else in the station, though, as he ran through its stagey mix of Mission and Art Deco flourishes. A tall, tired man in a rumpled suit, with a fierce last-minute-or-already-too-late stare, running for a train. Like a piece of film noir.

He made it to the platform in time, and began the last leg of the trip to Kurain.


It was overcast when he arrived at the manor, having walked and run from the station rather than lose the momentum he felt by trying to call. So when he arrived, of course, they weren't expecting him.

"Maya," he said to the woman who had come to the gate. She looked at him questioningly.

"I'm Phoenix Wright. I need to see Maya Fey."

And apparently she'd mentioned him, because the gatekeeper left him in the care of another anonymous woman and disappeared up the path at a good clip.

Maya came back down without her, and her face was better than a mirror would have been as she approached. Her initial look had been part pleased and part curious, but the closer she came the more concerned she looked and the faster she walked.

She hugged him first, as the gatekeeper withdrew to a respectful distance, and said, "Nick? It's WONDERFUL to see you so soon...but you didn't say you were coming...and you don't look so wonderful."

He handed her the DVD, covered with fingerprints by now. She took it eagerly, then noticed the state it was in, and was obviously about to make some kind of tart remark when he handed her the baggie, too.

She closed her mouth and took it, momentarily mystified and flattening the plastic under her fingers to read what was inside. She recognized evidence bags by now.

"I need you to-"

But she'd read it, and that was as far as he got before she had her back to him and was saying something in harsh and brittle Japanese to the gatekeeper, who hurried off wide-eyed. He wondered what she'd said, but not enough to ask.

She set off up the path then, walking so quickly that he had to trot to keep up, no matter how much shorter she was. She wouldn't look at him, either, and wasn't speaking. He followed her between the sparse garden plots, into the main hall, and around corners into a tiny storage room that was all dark wood and narrow shelves to the ceiling, where she immediately knelt to the floor and pulled out two bundles of fabric, one white and one black. The former she unwrapped partway, apparently unsure whether it was the right thing; when the contents turned out to be a pile of narrow cloth strips of a blue so faded it was nearly grey, she seemed satisfied and stood up so rapidly that she nearly smacked into him as he looked down. And again without speaking to him she pushed back out into the corridor, handing the white package and its odd contents to a woman who might have been the one to fetch her. The two exchanged short phrases in Japanese, the other woman hurried off, and then Maya turned and led him toward the channeling chamber.

I knew Maya, he thought. This is the Master.

But she did speak to him, once they'd gone several yards without seeing another person.

"It's...awfully sad. I'm so sorry for him and for you. Poor Mr. Edgeworth."

He didn't reply.

The candles in the chamber had already been lit, and after Maya closed and locked the doors behind them, she shook the black cloth out into a robe, longer than her usual ones and stiffer around the shoulders. He wondered if it was for him, but she put it on, covering the colors of her own attire, and knelt to the floor. He followed.

As she began the murmured chanting of the ritual, he realized that he didn't know what he wanted to ask or what he wanted to say. As remote as the adult Edgeworth had always been, Phoenix just wanted to grab him and keep him from leaving, to hit him, to hear HIM say something. The air in the room became motionless, and seemed to swell, and in the last instant he was still torn between a stony hello and "Why didn't you WAIT", until Maya screamed.

It was pain, not horror. His job had taught him the difference between the initial intake of breath that indicated fear or dismay and the more immediate response to physical hurt. He was halfway across the mat to her when the air pressure dropped to normal and Maya - definitely Maya, with no visitor behind her eyes - slumped sideways.

"Maya! Are you all right?"

Her face wasn't blank; there were so many emotions snarled together that her expression was the equivalent of white light.

His nerves demanded some kind of answer. "Maya. What was that? I've never seen that happen."

"I must have been misinformed." He could barely stop himself from bellowing at her to explain. She was clearly trying to put her words together properly.

"Channeling brings the soul of the channeled into the body of the channeler. But souls that already have bodies don't move so easily."

What did that mean? He wanted her to say it.

"Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, after he wrote that note, he DIDN'T kill himself. That was his pain, the feeling of having your soul pulled out, that you heard. He's still alive."

And now that he knew, the mix of emotions on her face was easier to sort out. Hope. Relief. Anger. Concern for him, Phoenix.

He could barely bring himself to say a polite goodbye before going down the hill to the train station, though he knew when she'd next be visiting.

The next time he was at the police station, he went up to Gumshoe's desk without saying hello, and dropped the baggie onto his desk in disgust.


Disappearing Act: Round 3

April 19, 8:48pm, 2019

"DisBARRED?"

Miles Edgeworth wasn't just outraged, he was incredulous.

"How could you POSSIBLY have been disbarred?"

...

"From a little girl."

...

"Littler than usual."

...

"Wright, how could you have accepted something potentially so significant under such peculiar circumstances?"

...

"You have a point. But what did the board say to you?"

...

"Wright, there is no such thing as 'sort of' unanimous."

...

"Only one? Who?"

...

"WHAT?"

...

"I had expected you to say Maclean or Soto. I've met Gavin in court. He's not the most sympathetic of men." He makes my skin crawl.

...

"Unctuous, I think is the word."

...

"Good luck with your disappearing defendant, Wright. I have someone else to talk to as soon as is possible."

And he hung up the phone. He had the vague idea that he ought to have been more sympathetic, but he wasn't very good at being sympathetic. And everybody else in Wright's little circle, with the exception of Franziska, was.

Gumshoe, Larry, and Wright's assortment of gals Friday-and-all-the-rest-of-the-week would bring him beer, and make supportive remarks, and take him out for terrible food.

Edgeworth would willingly be the one who looked into the abyss. He went for his car keys and drove to Kristoph Gavin's office.


The building's hallways may have been bright and clean, but they were also windowless, narrow, and convoluted.

I'm sure that if I'd played more computer games in college, I'd be feeling nervous right about now.

Gavin's lights had been on, he had seen from the outside, so he didn't bother to knock once he reached the door with the correct nameplate. The knob, as he'd expected, twisted silently under his hand.

And Gavin was sitting in the chair facing the door, smiling mildly.

"Prosecutor," he said. "I knew you'd be along."

It took only an instant for the startle to fade. No need for a polite preamble, then. "Of course you did, Gavin. It was insulting."

"Oh, you're not the only one entitled to feel somewhat insulted. After all, your realizing that I wanted to have this conversation was contingent on your already not liking me very much."

"And now that I'm standing here?"

"Won't you sit down?"

"I will not."

"And you wouldn't like to continue this in a less weighted location? May I buy you a collegial drink somewhere?"

"No."

"Have it your own way." He put his hands onto his knees and leaned forward. "I don't think you're a good sort of friend for Mr. Wright to have."

"I beg your pardon." Edgeworth's voice was a river on the verge of freezing, but his pulse had jumped at Gavin's words.

"Simply what I said. His reputation, up, regrettably, until today, has been an impeccable if very strange one. Yours, on the other hand, is more or less permanently shadowed. If he wishes to regain his place in the courtroom, he simply cannot do it while keeping company with the Demon Prosecutor. And at any rate, I'm quite sure that being his friend is not where your most genuine instincts lie. It's very duplicitous, really."

Gritting his teeth, Edgeworth stared down at the blond man with an expression that had made witnesses literally tremble.

"Oh, come now. You and I are almost certainly the two gayest larks in this city's legal system. I'm sure you aren't so oblivious as to think me incapable of recognizing it."

"I exempt you, Kristoph."

"You EXEMPT me?"

"I may be insulting you further with this observation, but that risk doesn't trouble me badly - I have great difficulty imagining you loving anyone."

"Ah, but the hormones pick a direction, don't they..."

They stared at one another. Edgeworth's look was one of steady loathing, he knew. He'd seen it in photographs. Kristoph's, though, shifted like the colors on a pigeon's neck. It was part scorn, part quiet amusement, and part the curiosity of a boy dismantling a live insect. And on top of it all, somehow, invitation. It was oily, a few degrees shy of room temperature, and absolutely repellent.

After a few seconds, Kristoph turned his head away and leaned back with the calm, barely bothered air of a man who'd just tried to open a door with the wrong key.

"...and you have an excellent imagination."

Edgeworth caught his breath. "Gavin. You've as much as admitted to costing the most ethical attorney in Los Angeles his badge on an ethical violation. And you've indicated that you'd like to discuss this. But so far you've had very little of substance to discuss."

"I told you to stay away, Prosecutor. I think perhaps I hear Europe speaking into your ear."

"I announced my intention to again make Los Angeles my permanent residence less than two weeks ago."

"Reconsider."

"This situation itself would have brought me back from Europe had I not already been here."

Gavin seemed to be losing his patience at last. "I can make your life a very difficult one, Prosecutor. If the intimation that Wright's badge might be as readily restored as it was removed wasn't enough carrot for you, do consider the stick. Think for a moment what a unified pet Bar Association board might make of your early career." He smiled. "Though of course, the idea of such a board being less than impartial is an abhorrent one."

The next sentences should have been difficult for Edgeworth, but to his surprise they came out easily. "I imagine I deserve some anguish for my actions during those years. You can't run me off with that sort of threat."

Kristoph looked delighted. "What a surprise to everyone! Pink jackets and cravats and there's a ROMANTIC under them!

"No, Edgeworth, I wasn't finished. I thought your concept of yourself as Wright's self-destructive black knight might permit you to suffer nobly for his sake. But think of the cases that you and he partnered on."

He paused for a moment. "A little pang there, Edgeworth, I'm sure.

"At any rate, if you and Wright are both disbarred, just think of all of the good people who would be entitled to a fresh appeal. And of all of the good people who would be under scrutiny again. Think of Will Powers and Maya Fey. And Engarde. And do think of Damon Gant. Once everyone was convinced that the public faith in your joint exercises was misplaced, just imagine the scars we could reopen." Kristoph flexed his own wounded hand. "Think of poor, maligned Manfred, getting his name cleared ever so slightly too late."

And Kristoph's brother was the star of the Prosecutor's Office. Edgeworth couldn't speak.

"You see, at least one of the twin pillars has to remain intact if these people are to continue as they are. And it really is a glorious joke that the remaining pillar turns out to be YOU.

"Enjoy this, Edgeworth. All this time you thought you'd redeemed yourself. And now the miracles of your later career aren't just a response to its earlier evils – they're dependent on them.

"And don't think that I haven't considered the possibility of your running to Wright and explaining everything, instead of back to Europe like a good little boy. I'll be keeping a very close eye on him. I think I'll be his friend. And if I get the idea that he's anything but tremendously disappointed in you, we'll start with you and move right on to Maya Fey.

"I can see how this might be stressful...but he might redeem even me. He has that effect on people. Or, you know, you could always kill yourself again."

Edgeworth was angrier than he'd ever been in his life. But I can't do anything to him. I just have to get out of his office before I can make another move. "I think you have made yourself quite clear. Good night." He turned around. Two steps. Reach for the door.

"You've forgotten something, Prosecutor." And with that, Kristoph dove at him, out of the chair he hadn't budged from since the conversation began (my God, he's fast), shoved him back against the closed door, and gave the lapel of his jacket a violent yank. Edgeworth's cell phone jumped out of the inner pocket and both men lunged for it. But Kristoph was closer, and his arms were longer, and in one easy motion he scooped it up and smashed it with the heavy statuette of Blind Justice that had been sitting on the side table. "Of course you were recording me, Miles. I'm glad to see I didn't underestimate you. Good night."


April 20, 10:49am, 2019

"What do you mean, you're going back to Europe?"

He couldn't meet Wright's eyes. Muttered something about research.

"Edgeworth, if I...now is when I need you."

And he wanted to explain, and he pictured Wright trying to lie to Gavin, and then pictured Maya, and Will, and Gant.

He muttered something very similar about research, and Wright looked agonizingly disappointed. He already looked like he'd slept in his clothes.

"Wright, I can't stay." And that's all I can tell you. Please, please, realize how little I'm saying and puzzle this out the way I've seen you do so often...

But Phoenix seemed to have already stopped being a lawyer, and his blue eyes looked cynical.

"Well, go then. Bon voyage. Read a good book for me." He paused, a pause that turned out to be the length needed to weigh a metaphorical dart. "I can't say that I understand how this can STILL come as such a surprise."


April 22, 5:04am, 2019

Franziska had picked him up from the Lilienthal airport in Berlin, although he'd tried to point out that it was too early in the morning for her to need to do that. Most of his things hadn't even been shipped to Los Angeles yet, and it had been simple enough (in a sense) to stop them being shipped at all, and so he wasn't traveling with all that much - but his sister took the larger of his two large suitcases away from him when she found him at the luggage carousel.

She hadn't wanted to talk too long over the phone, but she let him explain all of it in the car as they left the city. He did, carefully, as though he were handling something with a broken bone, and she said, "Little brother. You should never have agreed to stay."

He glanced up to her eyes in the rearview mirror.

"I am not saying that I don't comprehend your foolishness. Just that I cannot help but deplore it. Look where it got you."

He turned his head to look out the window.

"Stay with me. There's more than enough for you to do in Germany." A soft, wry tone came into her voice. "And plenty of perfectly good men I'm not using."

"Actually, I had been thinking of France."

"Pervert," said Franziska, and put one of her leather-gloved hands gently over his.


Disappearing Act: Bonus Round

February 20, 1:17am

Light from a sinking moon poured through the first-floor window of a bed and breakfast in Sonoma, and Phoenix Wright shook himself out of a memory of walking away from Gumshoe's desk, and a concurrent echo of the sound of his own office door closing. Staring at someone lost in thought, it turned out, was a great way to get lost in thought yourself. He looked again at the picnic table out on the wet lawn, only to see it empty.

You got me again.