DISCLAIMER: Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban is the property of Capcom. This is a non-profit tribute to the games we've come to love.

A/N: All the questions regarding both murder cases have been made. From here on out, we'll become exposed to the answers. Some of them will probably be predictable, others not so much. But if it keeps you trusty readers interested? It doesn't matter that much, right?

Things are only bound to get tougher, stranger and a bit more tragic from this point forward. Can you guess how this story is going to end?

Lastly, I've changed the primary genre of the fic from drama to crime. Seems more fitting.

Please review and enjoy. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

This ain't no place for no hero,

This ain't no place for no better man.

This ain't no place for no hero

to call home.

No Place For A Hero

Chapter 10 – Alice's Ambition

May 5th, 1:05 PM

Detention Center

Visitor's Room A

A defense attorney and his magician assistant began piecing together the elusive puzzle called "truth"; meanwhile, a good several miles away, another man was a bit farther ahead in a similar pursuit. Phoenix Wright had to return to the detention center and see his client, a freelance photojournalist called Lotta Hart who, by all accounts, had refused to help him discern the nature of the crime she was accused of. Now he was ready; the light of evidence and logic shone bright upon him, ready to guide him to the one true answer.

Lotta welcomed her attorney with a glance. She rubbed at her wrists.

"Yer back sooner than I though ya'd be, Nicky-boy."

"I would have been here even sooner, but I had to feed my hamster." Phoenix joked, quickly noticing the skin around his client's wrists had been worn raw. "Are you alright?"

Lotta rolled her eyes and smiled, rotating her hands with no problems. "Course I am, darlin'! 'Tis just a flesh wound. They need more than just playground booboos to break me!"

Nick grinned. Lotta was either good at putting up an act or was indeed mentally and physically tough to handle incarceration. Whichever it was, she trusted her attorney. That's all that mattered.

"You know," he wondered while placing his briefcase at the side of his chair. "I got this theory."

"…about what happened at Alice's place?" Lotta winced.

"Nah. About why people keep committing crimes like they do."

The photographer quirked an eyebrow. This was an odd tangent. "I'm listenin'?"

"Okay! I think people keep breaking the law like they do because of one simple reason."

"That being…?"

"They haven't tasted prison food." Phoenix grinned.

Lotta burst into a cackle.

"I'm willing to give my testimony on that theory!" she commented still with a smile, although now she was smacking her lips and grinding her tongue against her teeth. "Whatever it is they gave me tastes like freakin' newspaper. Blegh."

Nick laughed while reaching into his pocket like a hitman getting his gun.

"Speaking of testimonies, remember my girlfriend? She told me I should have another word with you."

Lotta abruptly stopped laughing and nearly choked on her spit. Her eyes trained themselves on the magatama Phoenix brandished like a badge of honor. Meanwhile, the attorney closed his eyes for a second and, when they reopened, he and Lotta had been transported to a strange, timeless void. His client was surrounded by a spiderweb of chains and sturdy locks.

Time to break my way into the truth, he mused to himself.

"What did your girlfriend tell you?" Lotta asked hesitantly.

"She told me you lied to me." Nick stated matter-of-factly. "But she also told me you have a good reason to be scared of telling the truth."

Lotta remained silent. Nick didn't have it in him to stare her down until she broke -like Edgeworth would have done-, so he opted to lace his fingers together and wait. Yet, she insisted in her silence; Phoenix didn't. Time was up.

"You were in Alice Peabody's apartment the night she was killed, Lotta."

"Gwark! Whut!"

Don't judge her. Don't get ahead of yourself. Smile., his inner confidence whispered to him, just like Mia Fey's spirit did all those years ago.

"The police found the new camera Alice bought. It had some fingerprints all over it, and it was broken." he elaborated. "The fingerprints led me back to you."

Lotta looked like a ghost, reeling from the impact of the evidence.

"Ohmygosh. They didn't take it…!" she muttered to herself.

Nick raised an eyebrow. "Pardon?"

"I mean… They did!" Lotta nervously crossed her arms. She decided to play hardball. "Well, that's because it was my camera.

"I wanted Alice to see it." the photographer continued. Her lie knit itself tighter as she spoke. "But I tripped on her carpet and I dropped it; it broke into like four bits. It was a mess! I was pretty steamed about it, so I excused myself because I didn't wanna lash out at a bud."

Phoenix immediately retaliated. Over the years, he had adopted a style of cross-examination that was constant and steady like machine-gun fire. He asked for no quarter, and in exchange he gave none.

"That's funny. I could swear the camera broke in two places: the lens and the body."

"-well…"

"And I think Alice's credit card statements list a recent purchase of the same camera. Same brand, same model." Nick continued on, producing a copy of said statements from his briefcase. "So how much did yours cost, Lotta?"

Lotta fixed her headband and lowered her head like a scolded child. Several of the psyche-locks broke and disappeared.

"Alright, Nick. You win. Just… stop creeping me out." she mumbled, vulnerable as she was. "You're playing me like a piano. I get it."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to be derisive." Nick sighed and continued. "It was Alice's camera, but your fingerprints are on it. That means you were there. That could mean you also broke it."

"I did…"

Phoenix glanced away briefly to see more of those locks shatter, as if they were made of glass.

"Okay. Did you have an argument with Alice then?"

Lotta sighed and nodded, causing Nick to furrow his brow in thought.

"I thought you were friends. Did you also lie about that?"

"N-no! I meant that!" Lotta explained, more for Alice's sake than hers. She didn't want her to be seen as someone with whom she had any ill will towards, or vice versa. "I mean, we got a little competitive sometimes, yeah! Ya gotta be if ya work freelance like we do. But we never had a bad word to say to one another!"

Hearing Lotta confess helped Nick take in the gravity of the circumstances. If they did indeed argue in spite of getting along so well, there must have been an important reason.

Phoenix took Lotta's thoughts and completed them with his own. "Not a bad word to say to one another… until that night."

"Until that night." the photographer repeated with a sad, regretful tone.

"What did you fight over?"

Lotta rested her forehead on her hands, too absorbed in her own thoughts or too reluctant to answer. Either way, Nick knew it was time to wake her up with some more evidence.

"During the afternoon, when I was visiting Alice's apartment," he explained. "I noticed the broken camera… but I also noticed it had no film in it. Memory in this case. Everyone on the scene thought it was pretty strange.

"-and only just a little while ago, a detective reported that she found a memory stick hidden inside the stuffing of a pillow in Alice's bedroom. Obviously, the police thought it strange that she went to such lengths to hide something of that sort, so small and really unimportant, all things considered. So it was analyzed."

Phoenix looked Lotta in the eyes. She didn't have to know that last part he made up; Ema had only given him a gist of an idea, nothing else.

"Do I go on or are you ready to talk?" he asked patiently.

Lotta sighed one last time, the Psycho-locks bursting all around her as she began to speak. Her secret had been bared, the events of last night revealed.

May 4th, 8:32 PM

Alice Peabody's Apartment

Living Room

Alice Peabody, with her short blonde hair and her round features, had the appearance of an angel, hence why it was so frightening to see her mad. Lotta Hart had it worse: she made her furious.

"How dare you come into my house and tell me how to do my job!"

"…Ya gotta understand, honey. That's totally not it, but we're way in over our heads with this!"

Alice widened her blue eyes and quickly looked away from Lotta, pacing around her small living room.

" I thought you'd understand, Lotta! I thought you would be happy for me!"

"Alice, whatever yer thinking…"

"But you're just jealous that I got a better scoop than you did!"

"Oh my God…"

"What!"

Lotta massaged her temples and closed her eyes. If she let herself be roped into the same kind of anger Alice experienced, the game was over. They'd get into a screaming match and nothing would be settled.

"One thing is catchin' a celebrity with his or her hands dirty…" Lotta tried to explain. "But this is outside of our field of work! It's outside of what we're supposed to do! Yer only risking your life over something ya think is worth it!"

Alice crossed her arms and trained her eyes on Lotta's.

"And what if I think it is? What if I think you'll only take my photos and steal them?"

Lotta grimaced. Did she really mean that?

"Then I'd be in the terrible obligation to call ya an idiot." she spat back and immediately followed, not wanting Alice to cut her off yet. "It's true that in my day I caught pictures of some nasty things, like murders. I'm not proud of it. I caused people grief and I nearly sent 'em to the slammer for no good reason. In the end… I still went nowhere. Do you understand that?"

"That was you." Alice pointed out with a lot of vitriol in her tone. "This is me."

Lotta was fed up. She went home with her point.

"Alice, they are going to try and kill you to get to these pictures. They won't be happy with just taking your camera and stealing the memory stick in it! They'll try to silence you for good!" she claimed, shaking a fist.

Alice, at this point, had perhaps become haughty. She made a face.

"So? I honestly want to see them try. I'll call the police. They'll protect me. I'll take the risk, so good luck getting ahead in your career when you're a coward."

May 5th, 1:29 PM

Detention Center

Visitor's Room A

"At that point I saw red, took the camera on the coffee table and threw it against the wall." Lotta concluded her story with a sob. "…Lordy. I should've insisted a little more. Maybe she woulda understood then. We could be friends still, and she might still be alive…"

Nick looked as solemn as a priest during the time he heard this story.

"That's impossible for you to know." he started to console her. "You did your job. You did what a friend was supposed to do. Sadly, sometimes part of that is realizing you can give people advice, but not orders. Whatever decision she did or didn't take was her responsibility alone."

The attorney balanced forward and whispered:

"I'm sorry, Lotta."

Lotta finally broke, rubbing her hands on her eyes as she began to weep a little. All she could do was repeat Alice's name and say she was sorry in a barely intelligible, moving bawl.

Phoenix meanwhile awaited the moment when she had let most of it out.

"There. Are you okay now?"

Lotta, red-eyed and quite shaken, drew in a deep breath and nodded.

Nick hated to go back to business so fast, but he knew he had to be strong for his client. She had to realize it was his responsibility to help her.

"What was in those pictures Alice took?"

Lotta narrowed her still swollen eyes.

"I thought those had been analyzed."

Oh crap.

"The analysis wasn't very conclusive." Nick lied immediately. If it was an obvious lie, things had gone past a point where Lotta didn't mind anymore.

"Alice was waiting outside Hotel Kohleefohnyah. You know, that fancy-schmancy place?"

"Got it."

"Well, she locked herself in her car and parked it in front of this place. She was there all night, following a lead claiming that the protagonists of Shack M.D. were seeing each other there, doing the whole hidden romance thing."

"Ha ha ha. Shack M.D." Nick chuckled. "Goldman, it's not lupus! Also, you're black! My boss is hot!"

"Yep! That one!" Lotta grinned for the first time in a while. "But do you know what's next to the Hotel?"

The attorney was caught off-guard. The truth was that he didn't frequent those parts of town unless he absolutely had to… but then it hit him like a wound-up haymaker, flush on the brain.

"You mean the Great City Bank!"

"I guess you've been catching up with the news." Lotta said with a smirk. "Alice sure didn't get her big celebrity scoop."

It all made sense. Phoenix was awestruck.

"She took pictures of a bank heist in process!"

"Yep." Lotta lowered her eyes and ruffled her afro. "One of her contacts told her the guys who did this were Hugo Cadaverini's people. You know, the son of that Bruto mafia godfather guy? That's why I was so worried about her. These weren't just some hungry thugs who happened to hit the jackpot."

Nick nodded, but he only did so absentmindedly. His mind was working like a dynamo, piecing facts and details together to form an idea in his mind.

"So Alice was murdered by a mob hitman, probably. Someone was sent to silence her, like you tried to warn her."

Lotta nodding now. Nick rubbed at his chin and kept thinking.

"I got it! Lotta, do you have any way to prove what you just told me?"

"W-what part?"

"Anything!" Nick said with a smile. It was almost literally sparkling. "I think I just found a way to get your acquittal tomorrow, and even find justice for Alice on the side. We could be close to proving who really murdered her!"

Lotta nearly somersaulted off her chair.

"Wow! Are you serious!"

"Darn tootin'!" Phoenix imitated Lotta's drawl. "I'm gonna hand you a piece of paper and a pen. I want you to write anything you know about the heist, about Alice: her sources, names of the informants, the people involved. I want anything that comes to your mind. Now!"

Lotta's usual enthusiasm returned and was amplified by Phoenix's. She began to do as she was told, writing and writing believing… -no, knowing that every word, according to this man, was a lynchpin that would bring justice to poor Alice, giving the last episode of her sad story a proper closure.

Justice, with a little touch of some Heartland charm!

The puzzle is coming together for one of our cases, but what about Apollo?

Next Chapter: Apollo and Trucy confront Ned Munny about his connection to the Tender Lender!