Warnings: Gyakuten Saiban (Phoenix Wright) 3 spoilers for the last case. Hinted shounen-ai (Edgeworth x Phoenix) but you really see nothing.
Disclaimer: Gyakuten Saiban aka Phoenix Wright is property of Capcom and is not mine. I am making no profit from this except in review counts. Any recipes found in this narrative are not mine and are property of…someone else. But I'm not getting any money for it either.
Welcome to part 2 in my attempt to get a Valentine's Story out before the flood of Valentine's Stories roll in. This is more family fun, no appearance by Edgey yet. (sorry girls)
The 13th"I found the marshmallow fluff!" Maya victoriously slam-dunked the jar into a waiting shopping cart.
"Hey, you break it, you buy it," Phoenix grumbled as he came up behind her with Pearl riding on his shoulders. In her hands was a package of chopped nuts. He stopped for her to reach out over his head and plop the bag into the cart before turning around and hunting for the baking chocolate. Maya was already examining shelves for vanilla extract.
The previous evening was eventful, to say the least. Cleaning forgotten, the two acolytes wouldn't listen as Phoenix voiced his certainty that chocolate couldn't be made at home. ("The girls in Japan probably bought chocolate from the store to melt and pour into molds, that's what they meant by 'making chocolate'!") In the end, the three crowded around the computer to search the internet for chocolate-making recipes.
The lawyer visited a chocolate factory once, when he was on vacation with his parents. Although he couldn't exactly recall everything, he was pretty certain it was a long and complicated process that required large shiny machinery like the kind you'd find in Star Wars Episode 3.
By the time they figured out that the only thing they could find on the internet were long, complicated processes involving custom-ordering native cocoa beans, roasting, peeling and hand-grinding them with warnings that it would turn out funny-tasting and lumpy, the girls decided they had no choice but to buy regular chocolate from the store and melt them into cute shapes. Maya would have pouted all night if the brunette hadn't taken them all out for "dejection-burgers."
After the small party arrived back at Phoenix's apartment and the Fey cousins were falling asleep on the sofa-bed in the midst of late night Pink Princess reruns, Phoenix scoured his bookshelf for any cookbooks that might hold a solution to their plight. At last, he found a possibility in a cheap cooking manual he bought out of pity from some starving home economics student when he was in high school.
"Maya, Maya, wake up," he shook the girl out of her half-doze.
"Huh? Whatizzit?" she mumbled, making out the blurry image of a plastic-bound book thrust into her face. Blinking, she rubbed her eyes and willed them to focus.
Phoenix puffed his chest proudly and pointed a triumphant finger at one of the recipes. "I think I found the solution to your chocolate problem!"
No reaction.
And he thought it was such a great turnabout, too. "I know it's not the same thing, but you wanted something you could make, and--"
"Nick, you're a genius! Why didn't we think of this before? Pearly!"
She reached over to wake the younger girl, but the attorney quickly swiped an arm between Maya and Pearl. "It's late. We'll tell her tomorrow."
Sadly, they didn't get the reaction they were hoping for the morning after.
"Faahj?" the grade-schooler sounded out.
Phoenix wasn't surprised, but Maya looked like it was the end of the world. "Fudge, Pearly! It's like chocolate, but better and yummier and kind of expensive, but we're going to make it! Then you can see what fudge tastes like!"
Pearl bit her thumb. Phoenix could almost see the gears turning in her head. "Better than chocolate?"
"You can see for yourself later, Pearly. Can you imagine how happy this will make Detective Gumshoe and Mr. Edgeworth?"
EDGEWORTH?! He hadn't had the energy to worry about him over the last few days. Since the pompous prosecutor had gone through the trouble of chartering a private jet to get to this country, he decided to stay for a while to make up for it. (Actually, when he and Franziska saw the prosecution's track record since they left, the pair were so abhorred that they planted themselves firmly in temporary offices and got to work. The Demon Prosecutor and Genius Prosecutor wouldn't be budged until people started going to jail.) Phoenix knew he owed him big for saving his hide, yet again.
"Wait, Maya. I know you want to try a Japanese tradition, but we're not in Japan. When I went to school, you couldn't give a valentine to only one person—you had to give one to everyone in class. It wouldn't be fair if you made all this fudge and only gave it to a few people," he pointed out.
Suddenly serious, Pearl nodded, and added, "It's discrimination."
The adults stared slack-jawed at Pearl. Just what were they teaching on those learning programs, anyway?
With a little effort, Maya pulled her mouth shut and turned it into a dazzling smile. "Well, the more the merrier. Valentine's Day is tomorrow. What are we waiting for?"
Thankfully, the recipe was simple, and they only needed a few things. Since they were going out, Phoenix remembered he had some business to take care of, and sat in his room writing a letter while Maya and Pearl watched Children's Masterpiece Theatre together. Then they took the bus to the video rental store to swap "The Steel Samurai Meets the Pink Princess!" for "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children", and stopped at a nearby drugstore for extra band-aids, gummy vitamins for Pearl, calcium tablets for Phoenix, and shampoo for Maya.
They rode to the post office next. A block from the post office were the public park and library, which Pearl begged to visit. She borrowed four books and Maya took two. (Phoenix had enough to read back at the office.) Since this was now officially an all-day affair, Phoenix left the pair goofing off at the playground and returned with pork buns, potstickers and boba for lunch.
This is how they wound up at the local Malph's late in the afternoon.
"There's the chocolate, Mr. Nick!"
"Where?" He swiveled around in the direction where Pearl was pointing.
"There, you just passed it. Keep going. Riiiight…here! Stop."
It happened to be on a middle shelf, and he kneeled so she could grab two packages. The pink-clad girl hopped to the ground and skipped over to the cart with her treasures. Having found the condensed milk in another aisle, they just had to wait for Maya to find the vanilla.
The teenager scanned the shelves too quickly earlier. She must have skipped it somehow, and was now reading the labels on every bottle to check. "Lemon juice, almond extract, essence of mint, red dye, blue dye, yellow dye, green dye, linseed oil, nutmeg, cumin, cloves…"
"Vanilla!" Phoenix crowed, snatching up the bottle three shelves down from where Maya was searching.
"Hey, I would have found that!" Maya protested, but was drowned out by Pearl's cheer of, "Yay, let's go!"
"Ah, home sweet home," Phoenix sighed, stepping into the apartment.
As he fiddled with the key, Maya and Pearl ran in behind him. Maya unceremoniously dumped her drugstore bag on the couch and Pearl carefully placed the library books on the coffee table before making a break for the kitchen.
"Hurry up, Nick, let's start!"
"Not until you've put those things away properly, Maya." Had the attorney heard himself, he would have been mortified at how motherly he sounded.
Pearl eagerly rose on her tip-toes to watch Phoenix place the paper bag on the kitchen table and remove the groceries while Maya dashed out and back in at the speed of light, finishing by putting the vitamins in the cupboard.
The sole source of testosterone in the room looked over the directions. "It says we need a four quart microwaveable bowl, something to stir it with, and a square baking pan."
No sooner had he said it than the wooden spoon and plastic popcorn bowl materialized in front of him with a rattle.
"Mr. Nick, do you have a baking pan?" Pearl asked. Maya didn't bother and was already flinging open cupboards to check.
"Yes, I'll show you. No, no, not there Maya!" Dashing in front of the teenage acolyte, he closed the door guarding the delicate china his parents had gotten him as a moving-in present. Willing the heart attack to pass, Phoenix directed a shaky finger at the oven. "Under there."
The pink-robed girl cocked her head, a questioning look in her eyes, but she got on her knees and reached to grasp the bottom edge of the oven. To her surprise, a compartment slid out.
"Oh!"
In the newly-discovered drawer was a small pile of baking sheets of varying sizes, and right on top was a 9 x 9 inch baking pan.
"Wow, Nick!" Maya exclaimed, bouncing over to peer into the drawer as Pearl gingerly lifted out the baking pan as though it were made of glass. "Do you actually use these?"
That was enough to break the lawyer from the shock of nearly losing his precious porcelain collection. "Of course I do!" he straightened up with a huff. "At least, I did…until you came around."
"What's that supposed to mean?" the top-knotted teen growled at the same time a much-less vehement voice piped up.
"Here's the pan. May we start now?"
All traces of outrage erased, Maya was all sparkles and smiles in a split-second. "Of course, Pearly! Nick, what does the book say?"
"Hold on," he stepped into the next room to grab the cookbook, opening to the page marked by a wooden clothespin. "Let's put this on the counter, so we can all see it. I only have one apron, so Pearls gets to wear it."
He kneeled down to tie the girl into a yellow apron with cute cats sticking their heads out of the breast pocket, with more walking around the bottom. In the meantime, Maya read ahead of the recipe and ravaged the fridge. "Butter! Okay, measuring cup, measuring cup…"
"Maya, can't you wait for one second?" Phoenix grumbled, finishing a double-knot at Pearl's waist.
"Where do you keep the sugar Nick?"
"MAYA!"
All this chaos, and they hadn't even started yet! Thankfully, the instructions were only a few sentences long.
"Okay, Pearls, what does the first step say?"
"'Microwave butter on high until melted,'" the youngster said clearly.
"Oooh, let's see, how much butter does it say? That much? I want to cut it!"
Phoenix looked up in time to see the teenaged member of their little party enthusiastically waving a knife above her head. His mind flashed back through countless B-rated horror movies.
"Hey, Maya, careful with—!"
*CHOP!*
The attorney flinched, waiting for the screaming to start.
*Plonk*
"Plonk"? He cracked one eye open—in his terror, he hadn't even realized he shut them.
A whole-and-happy ebony-haired acolyte was looking into the bowl satisfactorily. "Butter, check."
But true to the cookbook's reputation, the rest of the process went as uneventfully, even when the chefs included a child, a fast-food-obsessed teenager and a bachelor. That is, until they opened the marshmallow fluff.
"What is that?" Maya muttered, and Phoenix had to agree. He expected something called "marshmallow fluff" to look like whipped cream, or a cloud, or even just a giant marshmallow, not a jarful of white peanut butter. He didn't even protest when the teenager stuck a finger in and took a lick. Her eyes widened.
"It's good. Here, you guys try!"
"Alright," the lawyer complied, index finger rared and ready to go, but an intense glare from below stopped him short.
"Um…." He quickly turned to grab two spoons from the drawer behind him, and handed one to the pink-robed girl. "Ladies first."
Silently, the little brunette dipped hers into the white, sticky substance, and lifted out a petite mouthful, while Phoenix helped himself to a slightly larger sampling.
"Yummy!" Pearl cupped her hands to her face in delight, eyes sparkling.
The attorney nodded in agreement. "It tastes like marshmallow innards."
"Nick, let's get another jar of this and eat it sometime!" Maya suggested cheerfully, at the same time Pearl gasped, "Innards?!"
Phoenix pretended to be preoccupied with scooping the fluff into the bowl.
~end Part 2