Nick supposed that it was good the door was still open. Not good that in his hazy panic he had forgotten to lock it, but certainly easier on him. No hunting for spares or begging the stony-faced building manager. Even if this all felt like some terrible recital, or maybe a rerun, of what had happened the last time he'd easily turned the handle and faced Edgeworth's apartment.

To his relief, nothing was moved. A top prosecutor's apartment would have been a tempting treat for any burglar, as much for the coup as for the cash. The bottle of red wine still stood vigil over Edgeworth's will and letters he had left behind. Nick closed the door behind him, gulping down the nervousness in the pit of his stomach. No, he wasn't going to find Edgeworth near death upstairs again. (Edgeworth was safe. He was recovering. Nick had to remind himself forcibly of this several times. He wasn't quite sure why.) No, he wasn't going to have to re-live that night. It was just a house. Not even a house - an apartment, really.

It did seem terribly empty, silent and still as it was. Nick made a mental note to suggest Edgeworth get a pet. A dog or something. Even a goldfish. A boggle-eyed goldfish staring blankly in greeting would go a long way to making this place more homey.

Tss. Klik.

As soon as he heard the noise coming from upstairs, he froze in his tracks. That... that was new. And different. And unexpected.

Tss. Klik.

And there it was again. It hadn't been a momentary trick of his mind. Maybe a top prosecutor's apartment was even more tempting than he initially thought. Nick looked around for a moment before finally deciding that a cane from the umbrella rack was his best option as far as weaponry went. Holding it up behind his shoulder like a baseball bat, ready to swing, he held his breath as he snuck up the spiral staircase, tensed, gritting his teeth, hearing another hiss-and-click, reaching the top - there was that noise again -


"Is there something I can do for you, Miss Fey?"

"Oh... oh, no. I just wanted to sit. I'm sorry."

"No need to apologise. I just assumed you would rather be with your friends."

(A gesture towards Kay and Maya, cellphone in hand. The younger politely did not correct the younger that Kay was merely an acquaintance.)

"They're debating about whether the Jammin' Ninja or the Steel Samurai is better. I think both of them are excited to have somebody to talk with."

"And you have no opinion on the matter?"

"Oh... I don't, not really, I guess. I like both, really."

(A long moment of silence.)

"You're a lot different here than you are in the courtroom, Miss, um, v-von..."

"Franziska. Miss Franziska will do." (And she looked into her phone as if it would tell her if that was a compliment or not.) "And yes. I am. But these are exceptional circumstances." (The kind of exceptional circumstances where she didn't mind being Franziska.) "They are about as likely to be replicated as a unicorn is to come waltzing through those doors."

"Oh, I see." (Silence, again, for not as long.) "What's a... yoo-ne-corn?"

"A thing some people believe in, and some don't. Supposedly a white horse with one horn on its forehead who uses its magic to defend and rescue the innocent."

"Do you believe in yoo-ne-corns?"

"No. Just foolish fools and antelopes. ...I used to, though."

"What happened?"

"I was never rescued."


Tss. Klik.

He had stopped the swing inches before it was set to hit the record player. The record spun around lazily once more, catching the needle just at the edge after a few long moments of twirling. A burst of hissy static came through the speakers, and then the needle snapped back into place with a click. No robbers. (No Edgeworth laying on his bed as if waiting for the grave, either.) Just a record player and a record that was well on its way to being worn out by now.

Nick turned the thing off and wobblingly went to sit on the edge of the bed. Part of him wanted to burst out laughing, and the other part of him wanted to scream. He wasn't sure what had gotten him wound so tightly. Well. Actually. He knew exactly what. He had just been under the assumption he'd been coping a little better than this. But he could figure that out sometime later.

He had a mission, and that, at least, made his head a little more clear. So he got up, rubbed at his face, and sighed.

Now, where the hell to start?

The easy solution would have been to go downstairs and tear open the envelope with his name on it, and everyone else's besides. Edgeworth seemed the type to lay out his final logic in his suicide note, after all. But the thought of it made it seem dirty. As if he was somehow condoning what had gone on, or was complicit in it. Or as if he expected Edgeworth to still die and wanted to waste no time opening the will and starting to claw at the other man's assets. No, it made him feel sick to his stomach, and with the wax seals on every letter, there was no way to sneak a peek. He'd do things his own way, and sleep soundly at night because of it.

Edgeworth's bedroom was relatively sparse, and in a way, that made things easy. The main feature, other than the bed, was a large bookcase. Bookcases were in nearly every room, of course, but this one contained absolutely no law books. Instead it contained several matched sets of other types. A shelf full of Dickens... oddly predictable, in its own way, but only A Tale of Two Cities had its spine bent to show anyone had read it. Below it was a long row of squat little red books, looking very official in their canvas coverings and gold lettering on the side. Out of curiosity he picked one at random and cracked it open - and was completely unashamed to ignore the writing to breathe deep of the vanilla-musk of pleasantly aged paper. As for what was actually printed on it, well... It took Nick a long moment to realize the left side wasn't in English at all, but in Latin, translation on the reverse. Author and title marched along the top. Plautus. The Casket Comedy. That was all he needed to snap the book shut, mentally declaring he didn't much care for its sense of humor.

If he was going to go through this book-by-book, it would take him days. Best to be smart about this. If Edgeworth had underlined a passage, left a note to himself, it would be in a tome he'd read over and over... Something that looked a little frayed, a little worn, but in a wholly loved way.

He reached out to pluck the roughest-looking book from the next-to-top bookshelf. Return of the King. J.R.R. Tolkien. Nick squinted at the title. Mia had teased him once about not seeing the movies, despite his offhand comment that he wasn't really the swords-and-orcs fantasy type. He still hadn't gotten around to it. But, this was Edgeworth's copy, and there was the corner of a piece of paper sticking out. A clue, perhaps. In his eagerness, he flipped it open a little too roughly, and the scrap of paper fluttered out; he barely caught it, leaving it half-crumpled in his fingertips.

...A certificate? ...Oh. A certificate of authenticity. Guaranteeing that book to be a genuine first edition, signed by Tolkien himself.

It also named an estimated value. One that made Nick pale and then very, very gingerly put the book back on the shelf.

And so he sighed and dusted off his hands, facing down the bookshelf and rolling his shoulders, listening to his back pop. No answers in among the books. Maybe he'd been hoping for too much there. As convenient as it would have been to find Edgeworth's motives on the shelf, cataloged by some obscure dewey decimal number, his library fantasies weren't panning out.

Fortunately, he did spy an office through the next upstairs door.


"That's unfair of me to say, though. I had Miles. Much the way you have Miss Maya, I expect."

"Oo-ooh. So that's why you're so worried about Mr. Ed-ji-worth."

"Mm. ...I don't give him enough credit for saving me, I think."

"Saving you from what?"

"My father, of course. Something you should understand, I'd think. Both of us had parents who did awful things and then left us to be saddled with their legacy. Miles is at least teaching me how to hate my father for what he's done instead of blindly accepting."

"...I don't... I don't hate my mother. ...And I don't want to."

"Things are much easier if you learn how. Just another skill, and any skill can be learned."

(The girl said nothing, looking at her feet. And the tired woman looked into her cell phone as if it had the answer.)

"I suppose that's it, then."

"That's what?"

(A sigh.) "My luggage. It's well and truly lost. I'll have to buy an entirely new set of clothes or two tomorrow."

"...Lug-gage does that?"

"Sometimes. When you catch a last-minute flight, especially." (She put her hand over her face. And the girl leaned forward, as if trying to catch a glimpse of what was underneath.)

"Miss Franziska?" (She had trouble fitting the word in her mouth. But she managed.) "If you want to cry, I think everyone will understand."

"I won't, however."

(She is so very tired. Exhausted to the point where taking a child's advice seems a good idea. Something must be done.)


He'd expected the laptop, neatly sitting on the desk plugged in as if completely missing the point that it was a laptop at all. He'd even expected the flute tucked in its case, leaning up next to a music stand. Nick would be lying if he said he expected the music stand to have been covered with pieces of paper with the notes drawn in by hand, evidence of some having been erased and drawn in elsewhere. An original composition. The pieces of paper were just muddled messes to him, and he wondered what exactly it sounded like, but he didn't have a musician's mind and they remained mere dots on a page.

The computer he had honestly expected to have been reset completely, so he was slightly surprised to be greeted with a screen inviting him to log in and 'resume his session'. That meant trying to guess the password. Which meant at least thirty minutes and counting of frustration.

Of course he'd been sly and vain and tried his own name first. (Okay. Having Edgeworth's computer open to the mere mention of Phoenix Wright was a bit saccharine even for his well-hidden romantic desires.) Then any name that sounded familiar from Edgeworth's cases. He'd even gone into the room and gotten the second, decidedly not signed first edition of The Return of the King, and flipped through it to type in whatever names he could spot. Including the family trees at the back.

Eventually he ended up banging his head against the keyboard and making a sheer noise of frustration before accidentally bopping the enter key with his ear and being told yet again that the password he had typed was incorrect.

Fortunately his cell phone rang, sparing the innocent laptop from Nick's rage. Of course, that was it, he'd forgotten to tell Maya...

"Nick! We're going with Kay and Miss von Karma, so when you get back... uh, where are you, anyway?" Her voice tilted upwards in pitch as if she was just now noticing he'd been gone.

"Oh, I, uh, I had a hunch I wanted to check out. ...I'm at Edgeworth's apartment. Where are you going with them?"

"Kay has a copy of Steel Samurai and Jammin' Ninja Super Team-Up: Battle at Wuzong Forest! She says it's great, and that by the end of it she totally loved the Steel Samurai, so if I watch it I'll probably come out with a better appreciation of the Jammin' Ninja, and there's apparently an entire series - did you know that? - A series, just of team-ups! But they're only shown in France, or something, but she has them downloaded, and anyway, the hostel she's staying at has a television -"

From the other end of the line there was a clear sound of objection from Franziska von Karma. Evidently Maya brought the phone away from her ear, because Nick could near-perfectly hear the conversation. "...Kay Faraday, a hostel? Edgeworth would never forgive me if I let you stay there. I'll get you a room at the hotel I'm staying at."

"But isn't that expensi-"

"Yes, but I will gladly pay for your room. To be quite honest, I have come into the possession of an inheritance I would be happy to be rid of, the sooner, the better."

"...Does this mean I can, like, order room service?"

"Yes."

Minor girlish shrieking ensued.

"...Yeah! Nick? Nick, are you still there?"

He laughed tirely into his phone. "Yeah, I got it. So where should I head after I'm done here?"

"Umm... I think it's called the Royal Whitcombe. It's about a block away from the Gatewater? You know, the one with all the lights?"

"The one that looks painfully expensive to stay in, instead of just plain expensive? Yeah, I know the one. I'll head over there and meet with you when I'm done here, then."

"Great! Then I'll see you in -"

"Wait a minute. Kay's Edgeworth's assistant, right? ...Can you ask her what Edgeworth's password is?"

"Sure. ...She says it's latin. 'De legibus.' One of the things Cicero wrote, or something."

"What?"

"D-E, L-E-G-I... well, it's spelled pretty much what it sounds like. Listen, I gotta go now, okay? I'll see you later!" Maya chirped happily, barely giving Nick time to say goodbye before she hung up.

Nick sighed at the phone and put it back in his coat pocket. Figured that Miles Edgeworth would do something casually insufferable like have his computer password be in latin. It probably wouldn't even work, he supposed, grimly bracing himself for yet another failure as he hunted out each letter on the keyboard and entered the phrase. B, u, s... and enter, and...

To his mild surprise, the computer gave a cheerful chord and its screen switched to what, presumably, Edgeworth had been working on moments before.

A webpage about the muscle relaxer he had used. Completely unsurprising. And that, after some futile clicking, seemed to be that. There were files on the computer, of course, hundreds of them, most relating to cases of one type or another. Even using the tricks that Maya had taught him came up with nothing. The man's browsing history was damnably clean - simply looking up journals on law reviews and the decisions of court cases with the occasional stop at an equally bland diversion such as the BBC's news pages.

It was enough to make Nick want to scream. He settled for kicking hard against the desk in his aggravation, letting the wheeled office chair slide into the middle of the room. There had to be something there. Something interesting that would at least point him in the right direction, no easy smoking gun, but a hint of where...

...had that little black book been on the floor a moment ago?

No, it most certainly hadn't. Apparently jarred free from where it had slipped in the desk, it now sat on the floor, and Nick scrambled to pick it up. The year on the front of the leather cover, the hefty quantity of pages - a day planner of some sort. A smile broke out on his face, and he eagerly snapped it up.

He'd finally found what he was looking for.


They were in the middle of piling into the taxi (the driver graciously allowing Franziska to sit up front, where she continued to look oddly shellshocked), Pearl in the middle, Kay to one side and Maya in last, when Maya's phone rang and she squeaked. The curb was icy enough that she half slipped into the cab as she fumbled in her jacket. Kay started laughing, and then Pearl, and she couldn't help but join in, too. It was... well, she didn't want to say that she was enjoying it, exactly, given the circumstances that they all came together for. But if there was a silver lining to this cloud, it was probably meeting Kay. Maya got the sense that Kay was just as eager for company her own age as Maya herself was.

Besides, she talked up one good theory about the Steel Samurai, and who was Maya to say no to that?

She closed the door, still giggling as she finally managed to get her phone out. "...Hello? Oh, hi, Nick!"

"Hey, Maya. Listen, I need a favor. From Kay, actually, but I'll tell you first. You know that all the visits to prisoners in the detention center are taped, right? I need the video from the twenty-second of this month..."