"And this is like, twenty or so minutes later, he finally comes up to me again, still holding the entire bookshelf, and he says, 'Just to check, you said 'reversible', right?'"
The instant Phoenix finished his story, Athena broke out into a fit of laughter. She pushed her plate aside with a shaky hand as she set her other elbow on the table for support.
It wasn't just her, either. From across the shop, she could hear the owner giving a hearty laugh of his own.
Once she finally regained control of her breath, Athena straightened up, -though her shoulders continued to shake- and she dragged back her plate, which still held the last few bites of her sandwich.
Phoenix, who had finished his own, grinned at the reception his story has earned, and said, "And that was before he even got started on the chairs,"
Athena nearly choked on the last bite of her sandwich, giving a muffled reply of, "Don' do tha' when my mouf's full…!" as she struggled not to collapse back into giggles.
Phoenix just chuckled, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and motioning for the nearby waitress to return to their booth.
"No, I'm covering it." he said, lightly batting Athena's hand away when she produced her own wallet. "You paid earlier, remember?"
"If you insist." Athena replied with a grin of her own. There was a weird feeling behind accepting Phoenix's generosity. He was hardly a cheapskate in his thirties, but the difference in willingness to pay for any of their purchases that this 21-year old Phoenix displayed made her feel like a bit of a mooch when she kept quiet.
After thanking the staff, they emerged from the shop's front doors and onto the noisy street together. By now the sun was in the middle of its decline, the hazy sky giving the street an orange glow.
"So, you just heading home?" Phoenix asked.
"Yep. Thanks for… Y'know, this." Athena replied.
Phoenix smiled. "Hey, it's nothing. Nice to get out for more than just work."
"I know the feeling. Still, I-" Athena's voice faltered. She suddenly felt her knees shaking beneath her and she frantically took a hold on Phoenix's shoulder for support.
"W-whoa, Andie, you OK?" he asked.
Another of those headaches. Athena firmly rubbed at her temple with her other hand, waiting for the customary jolt of pain to subside. "Yeah… Yeah, I'll be fine in a sec…" she said quietly. Phoenix shifted his arm to support her shoulders and ease her back to her feet.
"You're sure?"
"Definitely." she lied. In truth, although the pain had faded, she was suddenly even more tense than she had been before their trip to the coffee shop.
Phoenix didn't seem convinced. Even so, he let her stand back up without his help after a moment. "What happened?" he asked once she had righted herself.
"Just a sudden headache. It's nothing to worry about." Athena answered.
"If only I was sure!" Widget unexpectedly chirped.
Phoenix did a perfect double-take in response to the device's outburst. "I-is that-?"
"Yeah, that's normal, too." Athena assured him.
Small talk made up most of their walk back. When at last they arrived at Phoenix's front door, he asked, "You're still going to the office tomorrow, right?"
Athena took a moment to think it over. Nothing she had planned for the next day would immediately intrude on it, but she wondered whether it was really wise to keep returning to Mia's office daily, considering the circumstances. She still didn't have any solid guesses about what her recurring headaches meant, and only hoped that they were tied to her time travel problems. She wanted to discuss it with Aura as soon as she could, but Phoenix was looking for an answer right now.
"I… hope I'll be able to make it in tomorrow morning. Things might be getting a bit hectic for me soon." she said.
Phoenix nodded. "I can cover for you with Mia if you can't make it in."
"Sure. Thanks, Nick. Hopefully, I'll see you tomorrow, then!" Athena replied, turning to resume her walk down the sidewalk. Phoenix gave his own goodbye behind her a moment later.
The streets could stand to be a bit quieter. As she made her way back toward the space centre, Athena's thoughts were drifting around the possibilities surrounding her headaches once more, but it was hard to focus with the noise level being generated by the endless flow of traffic. There was an alleyway she knew of that passed through this street. It would get her to about the halfway point while helping to avoid some of the noise.
She turned to start down the alley as soon as she arrived. True to form, the improvement in noise levels was apparent almost immediately.
The headache she'd felt after leaving the coffee shop had been worse than the one she'd felt back in the space centre the previous day, she was fairly certain, though whether that meant anything or not remained to be seen. She couldn't reasonably expect Aura to have much more of a detailed opinion than she did, of course; the field of robotics didn't usually leave much room for one to study time travel theory. Nevertheless, she was the first one Athena wold be telling about it, hopefully without another run-in with her mother.
That would still leave a fair amount of time in the day. It wasn't something she'd expected to feel, but among her other reasons, Athena was starting to wish that she could be back in her home time period even if it meant spending her day at work. That would at least afford her a bit of normalcy. She hadn't been in the past for even 48 hours yet, but already she missed having the reliable option to grab her cell phone and call Junie, Trucy, or even Apollo, whenever she wanted to just talk. At least the younger Phoenix was sort of like them.
Something was happening a block and a half down the alleyway. A few voices reached Athena's ears over the distant sounds of the street, but nothing distinct. She absentmindedly watched the two figures she could see ahead. She wasn't really paying attention to them; it was more to give her eyes something to focus on as she continued silently thinking to herself.
At least, that was the case for a few more seconds. Suddenly, a strikingly loud noise pierced the air, overpowering all others for a split second. Athena snapped out of her train of thought. One of the two people visible down the alleyway was now running in the opposite direction. They disappeared around a corner after only a few seconds. Though her mind didn't really take the time to process the thought, Athena found her walking pace increasing to a run. As she neared the scene, the remaining person became more clearly visible. A young man with shoulder-length blond hair was staring wide-eyed toward the back entrance of one of the buildings. He didn't seem to notice Athena as she reached his position.
"Is something-…" she began to ask, cutting off as her eyes followed the man's terrified gaze.
Athena's breath caught sharply in her throat at the sight of a brunette woman slumped against the steps outside the building's back door. The door itself was hanging open, though the room beyond it was too dark to see anything in.
The motionless woman had a large grey scarf around her neck. Even as Athena watched, a horribly dark stain was beginning to appear and spread across the scarf. Blood, it appeared.
The young man finally took notice of Athena next to him. He turned his head to face her so fast that it looked nearly painful.
His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. "A-are you-…?" he stuttered.
Athena could feel her own breath becoming laboured with panic. "What just happened here…?" she asked.
The man blanched. "I-I got a call to come and m-meet someone here. Th-there was a woman waiting for me..."
His panicked mumbling wasn't really helpful. Judging by the sound she'd heard before, Athena suspected that the woman in the doorway had just been shot, although the young man standing by the scene didn't have a gun, and there wasn't one visible anywhere around them. Had the other person in the alleyway run off with it…? Trying to keep her voice level, she asked the man, "Do you have a phone on you?"
He looked confused for half a second. "Oh-! Yeah…" he fumbled in his pocket for a moment and produced a cell phone, which he nearly dropped. His hands were visibly shaking as he attempted to dial a number on it. "D-damn it…" His fingers were too shaky to manage it.
"Here," Athena said, offering a hand to take the phone. She dialled 911 the moment the man handed it to her.
As the operator on the other end answered, Athena could hear the man muttering to himself.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God…" His voice was still relentlessly shaking.
(Count to four, breathe in, count to four, breathe out…)
Athena had investigated her fair share of murder scenes. In the year since she began working in the Wright Anything Agency, she'd seen victims stabbed, shot, strangled, and in one case, even burned, but she didn't have the steely nerves of a veteran detective. She couldn't look over a murder scene unflinchingly, and she'd never been so close to the scene of a murder when it occurred. Satisfied with what little information she had been able to pry from the young man, she'd moved back to rest against the wall opposite the scene and was trying to regulate her breathing and soothe her nerves.
It was only a few minutes before sirens could be heard from either end of the alleyway. While waiting, Athena had tried her best to help the panicked young man relax as well. She had gotten his name from him: Garvin Eisley. Apparently, the woman lying dead in the building's doorway was an old acquaintance of his, a Ms. Monique Hurst. That was all he had been able to say before losing his nerve and succumbing to panicked rambling again.
When the police began to filter into the alleyway, an officer approached the two of them. Garvin still couldn't seem to raise the nerve to speak, so Athena answered the officer's questions as best as she could in his stead.
"And this other person, was it a man or a woman? Could you tell me anything about them?" he was asking a few minutes later. This was the first question of his that Athena felt unfit to answer.
"I wasn't close enough to see anything clearly when they ran off." she said. "Mr. Eisley, could you help me out here?"
Garvin had a far-off look in his eyes. He was staring blankly at the opposite wall, and when Athena addressed him, he jumped a bit.
"Uhh… S-sorry-?"
"The other person who was there when the gunshot went off." the officer repeated. "What can you tell me about them?"
"Uhh… She h-had sunglasses and black hair, I think…"
"Uh huh. Anything else? Which way did she run off to?"
"One of the footpaths to the left of the alley." Athena said. She didn't suspect that Garvin had noticed in his state of panic.
The officer turned to shout something to another a short distance away. "Right." he said, turning back to them, "I'll need both of you down at the station for a bit. We've got a few more questions to ask."
Athena nervously cleared her throat. The officer glanced at her.
"Something wrong with that?" he asked.
"Uh-, no, nothing." Athena lied. In truth, she was suddenly struck with worry. How would it look if the police needed to see her I.D., and she could only give them one dated for twelve years into the future? There was no point to refusing the officer's orders, and this didn't look too good for the moment.
Ten minutes later, they arrived at the nearby police station in a patrol car. The officer brought the two of them through the crowded main room of the precinct and into a closed-off room in an adjacent hallway. Another officer was already waiting for them there, and the first left them to return to his car.
"Hey," the new officer, -a detective, going by his badge- said, "I'm Detective Dick Gumshoe. I've got a few questions for both of ya. Shouldn't take you guys too long."
The name was familiar to Athena. "Dick Gumshoe" appeared all over Mr. Wright's old case files from his earlier career.
Fortunately, the detective turned out to be of the friendly sort. Athena felt considerably calmer once she was certain that he wasn't going to ask to see her I.D., and once she was certain of that fact, she introduced herself as her usual pseudonym. It seemed strange that the detective waited until the end of his questioning to take down their names at all, but she wasn't about to complain.
"OK," Detective Gumshoe said once he had added their names to his report, "Either of you need a lift home?"
Garvin didn't answer. Athena was just opening to her mouth to when there was a loud knock on the door.
"Uh, sorry, one sec." Detective Gumshoe pulled the door open to reveal yet another unfamiliar police officer. "Yeah?"
"We've just gotten word back from the crime scene, Detective." the newcomer said in an unexpectedly gruff voice, "They're ready to make an arrest."
"Who?"
The officer motioned toward the table they were sitting at. "Blondie over there." he said.
"… Oh." Detective Gumshoe's face fell a bit. He stepped toward the table.
"Wait-!" Athena interjected. "What about the other woman at the scene? Have you found her?"
"There was nothing in the report about another witness beyond you two, no." the officer said. "Please, Miss, this is police business."
"And I'm a defence lawyer." Athena argued, "What evidence do you have to point to Mr. Eisley?"
"Enough." the officer said stubbornly. "Detective, could you get the lady home? We've got everything we need."
Athena glared at him. She wasn't about to get herself caught up in a large-scale argument with the police here of all places, but she'd seen nothing whatsoever back at the crime scene to suggest that the terrified young man in the chair next to hers had been involved in any way beyond standing at the scene. This wasn't right.
"Before I go," she said, "Can I use a phone?"
"C'mon, c'mon…" Athena drummed her fingers impatiently on the wall as the dial tone played for the third time. At last, the line picked up.
"Good afternoon, Fey Law Offices, Mia Fey speaking."
"Mia. This is Andrea..."
Nearly half an hour had gone by since Garvin's arrest. Athena was approaching the front doors of the space centre.
Over the phone, she had told Mia everything that had happened. Her first instinct when the officer back at the precinct had announced his intent to arrest Garvin had been to offer to take up his defence herself, but considering her situation, she still hoped to keep something of a low profile within the city. And so, Mia had been her go-to solution. She'd agreed to visit the detention centre as soon as Garvin was through with his questioning, and Athena could only hope that she would see fit to take up his defence.
From there, Detective Gumshoe had brought her back to the space centre. As she entered the lobby, she thought back to her plans to revisit the law office the following day. Would Mia even have time to meet with her and Phoenix again if she did decide to take up Garvin's case?
"Athena."
"Hey. Sorry I took off on you earlier."
"No kidding," Aura said. "Where have you been for the past few hours?"
"I went out for coffee with a friend."
"A friend? Since when have you had time to go around making friends while you've been here? You only just arrived yesterday morning, right?"
"It's complicated." Athena replied. "And it gets way more so after that, believe me."
Aura set aside her latest pile of notes. "I'm game." she said, pulling up a chair.
It just wouldn't be the Ace Attorney we love without somebody getting dragged into a murder case, would it?
