A/N: Dear people who haven't played GK2 and don't want spoilers: don't think too hard about the second paragraph of this chapter.
April 13 (2019), 7:35 AM, High Prosecutor's Office
"Here are those files you requested, Mr. Edgeworth."
"Thank you, Mr. Debeste. Good luck in court today." Edgeworth sat back with the Misty Fey murder records as his young protégé bowed his thanks (and assurance of finding the truth, of course) and left the room. He thumbed through the files and was immediately disquieted to know that the self-proclaimed time travelers were right, at least, about Armando's sentencing. "Unbelievable," he muttered.
He looked at the prosecutor for that trial and frowned. He didn't recognize the name; as high-ranking as he was, he knew everyone who worked here, from the Chief Prosecutor to that obnoxious trainee who was apparently going to marry Franziska (Edgeworth repressed a shudder and hoped that the self-styled rock star had a brother)… he even occasionally remembered who the Paynes were. So who was this Tauno Tavallinen?
Edgeworth sighed. Another point in the time-traveller's favor, it seemed. He turned to the next casefile, and his eyes immediately narrowed upon seeing how… edited the transcript and court record were. Quite frankly, reading through the transcript, Iris' trial no longer made sense. Entire testimonies were cut out - entire witnesses were cut out, namely one Dahlia Hawthorne. The transcript jumped from point to point without ever brining up what was so special about the Feys and Hazakura temple, and suddenly Godot confessed to the killing and Iris was declared innocent of first-degree murder.
Who would dare tamper with the court records? Edgeworth gritted his teeth, setting the file back on his desk and glaring at it. Of course, if everything revolving around Hawthorne was erased from public record, no wonder Armando didn't - couldn't - argue justifiable homicide. In this warped version of the case, Misty Fey had never channelled anyone. Maya was never in any real danger, not counting the danger from freezing, since the transcript seemed to imply that Maya was the one found in the Sacred Cave.
Frowning deeply, Edgeworth picked up the last file - Iris' accomplice to murder trial. He knew a bit more about this one; Wright had come complaining to him after Iris rejected his offer to defend her again and make sure she got a fair sentence. She wanted a state-appointed attorney, and the harshest sentence possible. Which was what she got: life in prison. (Mere accomplices didn't get executed.) The trial seemed to have only lasted about 45 minutes, too, if that. Not a surprise, of course, since everything had been clearly outlined during her initial trial - or at least it was before somebody decided to take some white-out to the records - but in conjunction with Armando's clearly rigged case… well, something was up.
Something was rotten in the state of California.
April 13, 8:00 AM, Wright and Co. Law Offices
Alois would have to remember to never share a room with girls ever again. Tomorrow night he would sleep on the couch in the lobby.
There were also the little things that came with time travel that they hadn't thought through - namely, no one thought to bring, say, toothbrushes. It had taken them pooling what little money they had on them and then twenty minutes of Watson panhandling last night before they had enough pre-2020 cash to buy some at the corner store. It was a bit of a close call when some random cop started getting a bit too curious about Watson… although that might have just been because it was late.
Feeling distinctly put out, mostly due to his rumpled clothes thanks to the fact that all his pajamas were still in 2054, Alois checked the calendar on Wright's desk and frowned. He knew that tomorrow morning, newspapers all around the county would be pushing the story of the famed Magnifi Gramarye's murder and the apparent gross security breach at Los Angeles Central Hospital.
"Watson, glaubst du…" Alois started, sticking his head into the guest bedroom, where Watson and Jana had both returned to trying to figure out who put a gag order on the courts, this time focusing on tabloids and whatever underground publications they could get their hands on, "what would happen if we told Onkel Wright about Onkel Kristoph and the Gramarye trial ahead of time?"
"Don't," Watson said, leafing through a 'All-Time Hottest Couples of the LA Courts' Valentine's day issue of Trial Error Magazine, presumably in the hopes that Mia Fey/Diego Armando would be in there.
"He meant hypothetically," Jana said from behind her own earlier issue of Trial Error.
"Oh," Watson said, putting the magazine down, "well, since he'd probably make a note to himself not to take that case, most likely it would just create an alternate timeline. We can call it alpha gamma," she added, mostly to herself.
Alois sat down in front of them. "Why does it make an alternate timeline?"
"Hmm?"
"Sie gehört mir," he said, "if Onkel Wright doesn't get disbarred, that makes an alternate timeline. If Herr Armando's sentence is appealed, that's part of our timeline. How does that make sense?"
"Maybe our timeline is an alternate timeline to begin with," Jana offered.
Watson didn't say anything for a few seconds, then said simply, "Mr. Armando's appeal already happened in our timeline."
"Because of Jana."
"The timeline always corrects itself," Watson said weakly, picking Trial Error back up.
Jana tilted her head questioningly. "Is our interference not what needs to be corrected?" she scoffed.
"It's more like…" Watson gesticulated vaguely, "we are the corrections."
Alois tilted his head now. Jana threw her magazine down angrily. "What does that mean?" she demanded.
"How much do you know?" Alois added, narrowing his eyes slightly.
"It's just a hypothesis I have," Watson said defensively, holding Trial Error in front of her like a shield, "Mr. Armando's sentencing seems like a cluster of temporal anomalies to me. If we went back in time and fixed it and it made a stable time loop instead of an alternate timeline," she cleared her throat, "that seems to indicate that… there were other time-travelers involved in his initial sentencing."
Jana and Alois looked at each other. "Aber," Alois said slowly, "you showed us the appeal records - if anyone actually went back and checked them in our time, they'd think it was extremely verdächtig. Miguel certainly did."
"Yet when I filed for an appeal, they would have had to check the records for Diego Armando's initial trial," Jana said, "they were apparently completely normal." While this was Alois' first time hearing something like this, he supposed that did explain why the procedures were so lax that Jana got away with using an ID number that hadn't been registered yet… the courts here had never been known for their stringency, but suspicious records on file would probably change that up.
"I didn't say a time-traveller was directly involved in the trial," Watson was saying, shrugging, "and even if they were, as long as they stay in this time, the records won't change, since they won't do that until the time-traveller leaves. So, they could have moved to this era permanently… and if that was what happened, no wonder the timeline correcting itself has to come in the form of, well, us."
Alois glanced at Jana. This sounded a little too well thought out to be just an off-the-cuff hypothesis, no matter how casually Watson was trying to play it off. Jana's mouth drew into a grim line; apparently she was thinking the same thing.
"What business would a time-traveller have covering up the involvement of channeling?" Jana said skeptically.
"To say nothing of how much power this would have taken to pull off, ja?" Alois added, grabbing a tabloid claiming to air out all of Armando's dirty laundry, "I would have guessed that the government is behind this."
"Perhaps… a large organization, affiliated with the government - or at least working with them?" Watson said, phrasing it like a guess but with a forced nonchalance that made it sound like anything but.
Jana raised her eyebrow silently at Watson, then ignored her in favor of a special channeling issue of Oh! Cult. Judging by the cover, they were only recapping public information about the Feys purely because a murder happened to take place at Hazakura Temple.
"It's not as though the anomalies end there," Watson continued, still nonchalantly. "You know we don't have to worry about the life in prison sentence because he'll be pardoned about ten years from now…"
"What does Regina Berry have to do with time-travel?" Alois said, playing with his hair in thought.
Watson sighed. "You know Mr. Wright has the best records on the Regina Berry incident," she said, directing her chiding comment towards Jana. Jana just grunted in response. "Well, I don't blame you for not knowing," Watson said, turning back to Alois, "since I'm sure the records at the prosecutorial offices are probably about as bad as the records for the Hazakura incident."
"…Fräulein Berry was a powerful psychic, ja?" Alois said. He had never looked at any files on it, but just about every adult in his life had been caught up in it, so he'd heard a tidbit about it every so often for the past 17 years. "She's the reason court is no longer televised."
Watson nodded. "You should ask someone about the specifics sometime," she said, "maybe one of the Feys, since a lot of people involved in it - your parents, for example - chose to write it off later in life. Anyway, the big thing about the Regina Berry incident was the fact that she turned into a star."
"Ein Stern?"
"That is ludicrous," Jana mumbled from behind Oh! Cult.
"That's what happened," Watson said, "and as a result of this, spacetime started to collapse around her." She sat back a bit, stretching her arms. "It's thanks to that that time-travel is possible in the first place - see, we're not really traveling through time, per se, it's more like we're… slipping through the cracks made on June third, 2028." She stared up at the ceiling for a minute before commenting, "as far as I can tell, we can only visit timelines that had, at some point, Regina Berry's breakdown."
She caught Alois' confused expression, but misinterpreted it. "That's what the first letter in my line classification system means," Watson explained, absent-mindedly picking at her lab coat, "if the cracks in time come from the Regina Berry incident, then it's an alpha whatever timeline. If they come from her having a private turn-into-a-star breakdown where she's not trying to take over the world, that would be, say, a beta whatever timeline, or some other letter, depending on the exact circumstances around it. So as an example, let's say that the delta timeline has Ms. Berry being born in 1870… delta alpha would be the 'normal' one, which right now I'm using to mean the 'corrected' timeline with either stable time loops or just no interference from time-travelers at all. Delta beta would be one incident away from delta alpha, delta gamma would be another incident away from delta alpha… of course, the Greek alphabet only has 24 letters, and obviously there are more timelines than that, but for simplicity's sake, and the fact that there is a certain amount of flux to be expected, even with stable time loops…"
"Do you know what she is going on about?" Jana asked Alois.
Alois shrugged. "It kind of makes me wish I had watched more Star Trek when we were younger."
April 13, 8:30 AM, Wright and Co. Law Offices
It wasn't wrong to eavesdrop in your own home, right? Because that was exactly what Phoenix had spent the last twenty minutes doing, and now he was thoroughly confused. Not because Watson was apparently doing her best impression of a sci-fi exposition fairy - he'd seen enough episodes of Doctor Who to keep up with that, not that Watson didn't seem like the poster child for unreliable expositors anyway.
No, it was the stuff about Regina Berry he was worried about! What was this nonsense about her trying to take over the world? She was only, what, seventeen? And she certainly didn't seem like the type!
Huffing, Phoenix stepped back out into his office, pulling the note he had written while on the phone with Edgeworth earlier out of his pocket. While he was still refusing to accept the idea of time-travel, he did confirm that there was apparently some sort of conspiracy going on. Phoenix wondered if he should pass this on to Watson, Alois, and Jana or not; somehow, he suspected they already knew.
What worried him was Watson's comment about records changing when the time-travelers left. No matter what Edgeworth said to the contrary, Phoenix wasn't an idiot: he knew the implications here. Records being mysteriously changed after interlopers returned to their own times certainly answered the age-old question of "If time-travel exists, where are all the time-travelers?" …or at least one part of it. Because even if records were changed, people would still know about these unsubtle time-travelers because, well, they were obviously from the future. Alois had spent an hour and a half yesterday actively convincing Phoenix he was from the future. Conclusion? People who interacted with time-travelers had their memories wiped somehow.
Suddenly feeling very nervous, Phoenix looked out the window. He half-expected the men in black to come strolling down the street, nueralyzers in hand. And yes, he wanted to tell himself he was being paranoid and letting his imagination get away from him, but instead he just thought, Should I call Edgeworth about this?
He walked down the stairs to the street, still unsure of what exactly he should be doing here. Maybe I should go talk to Armando, he realized as he unchained his bike from the sticker-encrusted rack. I should definitely go talk to Armando, he nodded to himself as he pedaled in the direction of the detention center. Fortunately or unfortunately, traffic was rather light (at least on the bike paths) so he hadn't had much time to think about what exactly he should talk to him about by the time he got there.
When Armando walked into the visiting room, holding his ubiquitous mug of coffee (…why did they allow him to have that in prison?), he passed up a normal greeting in favor of a brief nod of acknowledgement and a "No Maya and Pearly this time?"
"They went back to Kurain village," Phoenix explained.
"Why are you visiting me?" Armando cut right to it with a pointed slurp of coffee.
"I… heard about your appeal trial. It's on Monday, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
"And I heard that you had to be convinced to appeal," Phoenix said cautiously.
Armando seemed to gaze at him levelly for a moment before saying, "How much do you know, Wright?"
"Probably more than I'm supposed to."
Armando nodded. "I imagine that's exactly why I stood trial in a kangaroo court." Phoenix frowned, but Armando continued, "that's why you're here, isn't it?"
"Why would someone want to cover up Dahlia's involvement?"
Armando took a long swig of coffee before responding. "I can only assume that letting the dead testify in court threatened some powerful people."
"Government powerful or generic large evil organization powerful?" Phoenix said, leaning forward a bit.
"No clue. Not my place to think about these things anymore."
Phoenix glowered at Armando for a second before pulling his phone-notes out of his pocket again. "Was the prosecutor really someone who didn't work with the LAPD?" He squinted at the probably-misspelled name. "Taono Tavaleenen?"
"Ah, Tauno Tavallinen." Armando snorted into his coffee. "No, I don't think he was one of my former colleagues, but you couldn't blame me for forgetting him if he was. His only character trait was the fact that he didn't have any. He was so nondescript that looking at him was like looking at a blank wall; no matter what you do, your eyes always slide away, looking for something more interesting…"
"I… see," Phoenix said, blinking, "and… you didn't argue against this?"
"Was there a point?"
"If there wasn't one, why did you let Watson and Jana convince you to appeal?"
There was silence in the visitor's room for almost a full minute. "…she talked about families," he said at length.
"Who did?"
"Jana. She talked about families," Armando said, "you've obviously talked to her - didn't she call you 'Unkle Vright'?"
Was it really necessary to imitate a 15-year-old girl's voice? "…yes?"
"Looks like you get in on this family stuff in the future too, Wright. You get a niece."
"And a nephew," Phoenix added absently. Armando took an impassive swig of coffee. "But- you?"
"Did you know that spirit channelers can act as surrogates for dead mothers?"
"No." Phoenix blinked. "I've never heard of anything like that."
"Apparently it's not common."
"No kidding."
"Well," Armando said, putting his mug on the little divider-desk, "Little Miss Attorney-from-the-future tells me I'll be out of here in ten years." He laughed once. "All she's planning on doing is getting a reduction to life in prison instead of execution. But I don't care either way, Wright. Whether I die tomorrow or in 35 years with two grown children, I don't care."
Phoenix was getting kind of depressed. "So I guess you're not worried about… what kind of consequences this might have."
"I don't buy into conspiracies, Wright."
"Even after your 'kangaroo court' trial?"
"Execution's good enough for someone like me. As I said…"
"…you don't really care," Phoenix sighed, sitting back in his chair.
"Why do you?"
Phoenix rubbed his chin in thought. "Well… a couple of kids from the 2050s show up on my doorstep… wouldn't you be curious, too?"
"Or," Armando said, leaning forward, "are you still trying to save me?" He smirked momentarily before sitting back again. "Listen to Mia when she talks to you, Wright. You're done with me. Move on with your life."
"A-Armando…"
January 16 (2054), 10:10 PM, Wright Anything Agency
"And you tried calling their cell phones," Edgeworth said over a cup of tea.
"Of course I did - when I was on my way to the CAD," Miguel said shortly. He was seated with Edgeworth at the kitchen table, intently examining the pictures from Watson's apartment. "Both my kitten and the filly are apparently out of range, and I don't even have Wat's cell number."
"No one does," Wright commented, placing a mug of coffee by Miguel before sitting next to Edgeworth with his own coffee. "Apollo says he isn't even sure she owns a phone anymore."
"That is troublesome, though," Edgeworth said, his brow furrowing even more than it already was. "there aren't many places in Los Angeles where they could be out of service range."
"Valerie said they were last seen at five," Wright said, drumming his fingers on the table. "They could be in Arizona by now for all we know. Hypothetically," he added with a worried frown.
"That's assuming they disappeared right after they went up to the roof," Edgeworth said.
"But how did they get off the roof?" Wright grumbled. "The fire escape is broken, and it's pretty much impossible to pass through the Agency without being noticed."
"That's the only real suspicious point," Edgeworth said to Miguel, "Jana and Alois are both old enough to make rational decisions, they were with a trustworthy adult, there were no signs of violence, no ransom note, no indicators that this was a kidnapping or that there was an accident… and they've only been gone for five hours."
"I know," Miguel growled. "But I… well, I don't really know about Wat being trustworthy anymore." He frowned at his picture of Huitzilopotchli's character profile. Age: unknown, gender: male, blood type: O-, IQ: ~190; suspected god complex, Orestes complex, severe Perseus complex, possible Cain complex.
Wright raised his eyebrows. "Where did you get that idea?"
Miguel fidgeted in his seat and took a sip of coffee before answering. "I went to talk to Ares. I was wondering if his alleged blackmailing had anything to do with…"
"Clay isn't exactly…" Wright searched for a word. "Sane."
"He is delusional, paranoid, and has a vested interest in discrediting Watson," Edgeworth said evenly.
Miguel resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his superior. Instead he said, "I know," and sideswiped to a photo of a list of the known members of the Tula Group, whatever that was. "…do either of you happen to know who Tauno Tavallinen is?"
Wright and Edgeworth exchanged a look. "Somehow," Wright said slowly, "that sounds familiar. Wasn't… wasn't he a prosecutor?"
Edgeworth crossed his arms, tapping one finger pensively. "That sounds right, but…"
"I don't think I ever met him."
"I'm sure I must have, if he was a prosecutor. I just can't seem to remember him."
"Maybe he was like the - what were their names again? the Payne brothers. You know, lacking presence."
"I suppose," Edgeworth said, adjusting his glasses and looking troubled. Miguel raised his eyebrows at the whole exchange. "Fey, what does this have to do with the disappearances?"
Miguel stared down at the Tula Group list. Tauno Tavallinen, Piet Pompies, Jan Novák, Jean Dupont, Chichiko Bendeliani, Janina Jonienė, Kovács János, Sean O'Rudai, Mario Rossi, Marte Kirkerud… was it just him, or did this read like the Wikipedia list of placeholder names by language? He switched to the Teotihuacan Foundation page and saw a slew of similar names. Either that, or Janina Jonienė, Jan Novák, and Sean O'Rudai worked for both groups. Implying that the two groups were allies of some sort?
Should he really tell Wright and Edgeworth what he was doing with these pictures?
Miguel shook his head. "I doubt he has anything to do with the disappearances," he said carefully. The circumstances behind it, sure, maybe, but the fact that Alois, Jana, and Watson had dropped off the face of the earth? Miguel didn't see much of a connection… meaning Wright wouldn't be seeing any psyche-locks. And Edgeworth and Wright both trusted him enough not to press him about why he was studying his cell phone screen. Still, he couldn't help but watch them warily over the rim of his coffee cup. He'd clearly stumbled on some kind of secret when he broke into Watson's apartment - no, when he went to talk to Ares… was keeping it hidden the right thing to do?
April 13 (2019), 12:00 PM, Eldoon's Noodles
"Is there even a purpose to an investigation at this point?" Jana grumbled as she poked at the overly-salty noodles bought with the rest of last night's beggar money.
"Not for the trial," Alois said, shrugging. They both eyed Watson, who was sitting on the curb a bit away from them, silently finishing her own noodles.
"There is still a whole day until the trial," Jana complained.
"Ja, but when we get back, it'll be like only fifteen minutes have passed," he said, then added, "maybe."
"I hope so." Jana paused to eat some of her lunch. "Even if only fifteen minutes pass, for those fifteen minutes it will be like we no longer exist at all…"
"Hoffentlich, no one will even notice that we're gone," Alois said lightly.
"Which is a very good thing," Watson said abruptly, standing up and handing her empty bowl to the current Eldoon, "I shouldn't have to tell you this, but we really don't want anyone from our time investigating us."
Jana scowled at her. If she hadn't had a bowlful of noodles and borderline-caustic broth on her lap, she would have hit Watson with her riding crop. "It is not as though we are doing anything illegal."
"No, we're not, but this isn't the sort of thing you can go around telling everyone about. There are larger forces at work here than you understand," Watson said ominously, then turned around. "I need to go somewhere. I'll be back by… let's say three o'clock, give or take 2.25 hours." She walked off without another word.
Jana and Alois sat in silence for a few minutes; it was almost like they were waiting to see if Watson would come back. "Where do you think she's going?" Alois finally asked in German, with a cautious look around.
"Does it matter?"
"You know she's been acting awfully suspicious since… well, since my trial last month, I guess."
Jana frowned and stared into her noodles. "I know. But what can we do about it?"
"Maybe investigate Wat in addition to Mr. Armando?" Alois said with a shrug.
"How are we supposed to do that?" Jana scoffed, "that would be hard enough to do in our time, let alone now."
"I know, I know," Alois said, playing with his hair, "it's just… I don't know. You don't really think we're in danger, do you?"
Jana shook her head. "It might be a strange situation, but I don't think… I mean, all I'm doing is convincing a judge to slightly reduce Diego Armando's sentence. All you're doing is keeping Uncle Wright off our backs."
Alois chuckled. "True. And Uncle Wright isn't exactly known for being dangerous - attracting danger, maybe, but we should be safe at his office."
There was a comfortable pause as they both ate their noodles. But something still wasn't sitting right with Jana. "What exactly are we safe from?"
Alois looked down the street in the same direction where Watson had left. "I don't want to say 'safe from her'," he said slowly, "maybe safe from the same thing that got Mr. Armando on death row. You know what she said," he paused, apparently translating Watson's words in his head, "'a large organization, affiliated with the government - or at least working with them.'"
Jana raised her eyebrows. "You think she was serious about that?"
"Does she joke around?"
"It could have been just a guess…"
Alois shook his head. "Wat's not exactly a good liar. She's no good at hiding things when she talks… it's so obvious that she knows way more than she's letting on."
"Definitely," Jana sighed. "What are we gonna do about that?"
"Make it through the appeal trial and go home," Alois said with a firm nod. "I don't really believe what she said about us being 'regular time-travelers'."
"There's no way she was lying about that," Jana pointed out, "you just pointed out that she's an awful liar, yet…"
"I don't want to time travel," Alois said. "There're too many uncertainties… and I just don't feel safe."
Jana sighed again, nodding. She knew what he meant about that, even if she couldn't be sure if creeping apprehension was just an aftereffect of getting shoved through cracks in spacetime, or if it was because Watson had kind of revealed that she was about as insane as her half-brother, and possibly just as dangerous - and yet they had no choice but to rely on Watson. She had the-
"Alois, what would happen if we stole the time-travel device thing and just sent ourselves back to our time?"
"What, and ditch Mr. Armando?"
Jana waved her hand imperiously. "No, no, we could skip to his appeal trial, get that done in a half-hour, and then go home. What would happen if we just did that?"
Alois gave Jana a disapproving look. "Are you proposing we ditch Wat in the past?"
"Maybe," Jana said, poking at her noodles again, "I'm sure she could find her own way back to 2054, since I'm sure she has something to do with the 'large organization'. Why else would she know about them? How else could she develop a time-travel device at age 21?"
"We're the last people who should accuse people of getting outside help just because of their age," Alois pointed out. "Besides, we'd have no way of guaranteeing that Wat could get back on her own if we steal the device. And even if she did, don't you think she'd be mad?"
"I know," Jana said sullenly, scraping her boot against the gutter. "But I want to go home, Alois."
"I know, little sister," Alois said, smiling kindly. "Just two more days, and then it'll be like this never happened."
Why yes, yes I AM the type of person who criticizes time-travel mechanics in sci-fi.
BTW, I had to make up the Perseus complex. But with a little knowledge of Greek mythology, the fact that it didn't previously exist, and the mention of the Orestes complex, you should be able to figure out what it is. Don't get it? Just wait 'til Huitzilopotchli is introduced in a later fic. You'll know then!