August 19, 5:24pm

Wright stopped in his tracks, just an extra arm's length from the door. Like me in front of Kristoph's door. And me in the chair like Kristoph.The part of his brain responsible for overextending similes suggested jumping out of the chair and pinning the other man to the door, but the rest rejected that as one-sided, thoughtless, crazy. Liable to ruin everything that he hadn't just ruined already.

The blue eyes, after a seeming age, stopped focusing on the empty air in front of the doorknob and turned to him, and meeting their first look seemed like the least he could do.

Phoenix's voice was so soft he was practically whispering. "Miles? Kristoph knew that?"

He responded just as quietly. And now it's like trying not to frighten Pescador away. No, it's not like anything - I've never done anything like this before. "He did."

"Why didn't I?"

There was no answer but history. The look he gave back didn't have a single clear statement to convey - but he hoped it held the weight of years.

It must have, because Wright, in his ratty clothes and his disreputable hat, took on a soft and somber expression. "I loved you too, Miles. I...I'll be back. I have to think." He put one hand on the knob, and seemed to realize how his words had sounded, if not how his well-intentioned postscript would sound. "Don't worry."

And, looking somewhat stunned, he left.

Don't worry. Moron. Idiot. What else am I supposed to do until you come back?

If this is poetic justice, I don't like it.

He found himself hoping that the office wasn't quite as empty as it had looked. Gathering up his current paperwork and summoning Pess, he headed for Gavin's office.

The dog tilted his ears toward the door first, but as he got closer he too could hear faint music coming through the door. Not a guitar, which meant a recording, which probably meant Klavier was doing actual work. He knocked.

"Yes, come in!"

The younger man was seated at his desk, resting one foot on an embroidered footstool that went with NOTHING else in the room. His polite look turned into a smile when he saw who had come in.

"May I?" The dog's toenails clicked on the wood. "May we?"

"Of course! Forgive me not answering the door properly."

"For heaven's sake, none of the other prosecutors open their own doors for visitors, and they don't have your excuse. How is your knee, in fact?"

"Ach, much improved at least. Joints are slow to heal."

He frowned sympathetically. "I know. When did you replace your cardboard box with that?"

Klavier grinned. "While Herr Wright was away taking the bar, we spent a day driving around to secondhand stores. Fräulein Trucy wanted a real tuxedo jacket."

"Did she find one?"

The grin got bigger. "Ja, at the second place we went. But the plan was too much fun to give up just because we had found what we came for! Vera ended up with half a wardrobe of vintage dresses. Apollo has a very, ah, dashing silk vest. I found a leather jacket."

"And that."

"It is the right height. I like it."

"You should put up matching curtains, then. With big cabbage roses on them."

Blue eyes lit up. "I SHOULD."

"Your quartet - you take the pursuit of happiness very seriously, don't you?"

"Of course. But not in such a way that I think we should ever need to apologize for. Life is very short."

He meant to nod a response, but his head stayed low after he bowed it. Klavier noticed, of course. "And your own pursuit? How goes it?" The words were flippant, but the voice was gentle and concerned.

"You don't mean to tell me you don't know that Wright has just left the office."

"He did? Not that I wouldn't have eavesdropped, but I had my headphones on!"

"He did. He came to have the conversation that you precipitated with your little joke with the chocolate box." Their only conversations since that had happened had revolved around work or (once) Pescador.

"You think it was a joke?"

"It was ingenious, but yes, I have a distinct feeling of having been played with. Wright also."

"A joke would not be nearly enough motivation for me to spend a day in the dust unpacking every box and drawer in my damned brother's damned office, arguing with Apollo over nothing but nerves and thinking every strange sound was going to be Kris in the doorway." For Klavier, this was very strong language. And when he tilted his chin and glared like that, there was more than a hint of the Kommissar, and he looked almost fearsome.

"No. I suppose not. I'm sorry to hear that you argued."

The young man waved a hand. "It was the setting and the task at hand, nothing serious...and we put an end to it when we realized Kristoph would want us to be fighting."

Kristoph wanted you to be dead. The words streaked from his adrenal glands to the root of his tongue, but thankfully traveled no further. It would never be a helpful secret. "Thank you for making the effort, for my sake."

"And you are welcome...but after all of that, what came of it?"

"He knows the whole story."

"It was a revelation?"

"I think it was a shock. And I compounded it."

"You told him?"

"I didn't phrase it well. I said...'Kristoph knew I loved you.'" Klavier leaned forward in his chair barely an inch, but the import of that and of his attentive expression was clear. "Wright's reply was likewise in the past tense."

The blond man considered, and sighed. "You haven't given up because of that, I hope?"

"I..."

"You did phrase it badly, Herr Edgeworth. Even though it is true, I do not tell Apollo that I loved him yesterday."

A strange impulse overtook him. "Klavier. Please - be happy."

The blue eyes looked troubled and kind. "We are. And we try. But you too, Herr Edgeworth. You too."

"I had been wondering if I might occupy a corner of your office until we both go home?"

"Of course." He gestured to the other chair, which for some unknown reason was shoved sideways in front of a bookshelf. "Any time you like."

He glanced after Edgeworth until the latter was settled in the chair and reading a report, then returned to his own files in a sympathetic silence.

A violet-grey evening sank down between the skyscrapers, and at a few minutes past seven Klavier looked at his clock and gathered his work into a battered black case that had been hanging from one arm of his chair. "Is the beautiful automobile still under anesthesia?"

The senior prosecutor surprised himself with a very small smile. "Even I say 'the car is in the shop,' prima donna."

"I would never win at Scrabble if I spoke like that."

"DO you win at Scrabble?"

"No. And how are you intending to get home?"

"Via taxi. I came in with Franziska this morning, but she visits Adrian after work most days now."

"Let me prevail on Apollo to chauffeur you as well as me tonight. Unless you, ah, object to Sandra?"

"Not at all. But will he mind?"

"Not this." The young man stood up then, and winced. "Ach, too long at one angle. I should have come to the door after all."

"Just a moment." Edgeworth juggled his own briefcase under one arm and took the dog's leash in that hand, then extended his other arm to Klavier. "Here."

"As though I were your elderly uncle! Maybe I ought to buy a silver-headed cane."

"Not unless you want everyone to call you Prosecutor Wonka. Including me." They made their awkward way out into the hall, with a pause for Klavier to lock his door.

"Would you like to have dinner with us also?"

"I won't impose."

"Are you su- ja, all right, I see you're sure. Don't glare like that. It's terrifying. But do not just go home and brood and tap your fingers on a table and wander between rooms all night, hm?"

"I can't. I have to walk the dog, for one thing."

"I am glad to hear it. Good dog, Pess. I would scratch your ears if we wouldn't all fall in a heap if I tried. Make sure your master gets some air." The dog wagged at the friendly voice. "But Herr Edgeworth, don't give up hope. The next conversation will be better. Or if not that one, the one after that."

"What makes you so sure?" He was younger, young, after all.

"Because even hurts older than that can heal, part after part. Or did it escape your attention that you have just ridden down to the ground floor with me, in the elevator?"

August 19, 5:35pm

Phoenix barely saw the hallway, the elevator, the sidewalk, or the bus. He heard the soles of his sandals scuffling as he walked, but they might as well have been someone else's.

He was disoriented in time as well as space. Normally, when he thought about it at all, the past felt...well, rigid. Inaccessible. Past. But now, as he stumbled home, the last seven years - more like eight? - felt like a tarp draped over his shoulders, like a heavy garment he could throw off if he could only untangle himself from it. Absurd though it was, the feeling that he was just a few wild thrashes away from returning to who he'd been all those years ago was very real and very physical.

The irrationality of it bothered him, but on some level he was all right with it, for as long as it might last. Beyond that heavy tarp was reality, and that knowledge prickled the hairs on his arms the same as would a hint of icy air. In an unworthy way, he was glad that Trucy was still visiting Pearls and Maya up in the mountains for one more day. For someone who performed magic, she could be very hard on one's illusions.

He hadn't intended to go home right away, but he was pulling the front door open before he realized that his feet had taken him along the same overly familiar route from the bus stop that he'd covered probably thousands of times.

The bus. Pssh. I have a driver's license now. Which will mean something as soon as I have a car.

He blinked, adjusting to the comparative darkness of indoors, and found himself standing at the top of the stairs rather than the bottom. Some part of him was apparently very intent on getting him home.

Polly's eyes met his from the armchair once he opened the door to the semi-lit room.

"And?"

He wasn't ready to put anything into words, not really, but he didn't want to not respond, either.

"Oh, God, Polly, I don't know." He sank onto the couch. "Why was yours so easy?"

Apollo's eyebrows rose at that, though his hard gaze didn't waver. "Who told you it was?"

"Hunh?"

"It may not have been quite the opera yours is, but that doesn't mean it was EASY. Thanks for everything, Kristoph." Maybe it shouldn't have, but hearing it did make him feel a little bit better, and he let out a sigh. And regretted it as Apollo sharpened his look even more and fidgeted with his bracelet and said, "Relieved?"

No point in lying. "A little."

"So what happened?"

"Thanks for everything, Kristoph." Apollo whistled in sympathy. "It is...STRANGE to not be angry at Miles anymore."

"Are you really?"

"Mostly. I think. I was angry for so long that even without it I can feel where it used to be."

"Like when you lose a tooth and mess with the gap."

"Like that."

"So..."

"He told me he loved me back then."

His apprentice got a funny look. "In so many words?"

"No. What he literally said was...that Kristoph knew he did. When they met."

"So what are you doing back here?"

"I LIVE here."

The short attorney made an exasperated noise. "You get a love declaration after practically DECADES and you LEAVE? Are you even TRYING?"

"YES!"

"To do WHAT?"

"I don't know. What did you say about a love declaration?"

He'd expected another quick riposte, but instead was treated to Apollo leaning forward and, from the looks of it, trying to focus his eyes. "You didn't recognize it when you heard it. Did you."

"Who professes their affections in the past tense?"

"Hopelessly awkward people!"

He thought of something. "And me."

"What?"

"I said the same thing back."

"Sir - you had to before, but you've got to solve things with him now. You deserve each other. Shall I take you back there when I go get Klavier?"

"Ugh. No, he's probably gone with his sister by now. You enjoy."

Apollo turned red.

August 19, 7:08pm

He tried calling Edgeworth a few minutes after Apollo left, but got no reply. He tried the man's office a few minutes later than that, with the same result. He threw some leftovers into the microwave for longer than they probably needed to be in there and burned his finger with a droplet of grease when he opened the door.

He ate dinner in front of the television and couldn't remember what he'd watched, even though it took him nearly three hours to eat because he kept losing his train of thought with his fork in midair.

By the time he finished his cold meal it was too late to call, at least probably it was, and he still wasn't sure he'd be able to make as much sense as he wanted to, so he returned to his desk and fished out a notebook, a black one with unlined pages. The apartment was so quiet he could hear cars passing the building.

It's been a long time since I've written one of these.

Dear Miles.

I'm not sure if I'm going to send this to you or not.

Well, not SEND it, but leave it somewhere for you to read. Anyhow.

If Polly's wrong about this, I'll...no, I won't do anything to him. I can't keep blaming any of the bunnies for whatever innocence they've managed to retain. It stings to see them - or it has - but it's still nice to know that happiness is possible.

Why did Kristoph know? Why didn't I know? Was it so obvious, and was I really so oblivious? Or were you hard enough to read that only a psychopath could do it? When I look back...the answer seems more like "obvious." Like searchlights across the sky, giant Godzilla monster obvious. Except that the idea that you didn't, you couldn't, was even bigger and more obvious and it loomed there and blocked out the sun. And you didn't tell me.

As much as I'd like to, I can't even just blame Kristoph. We were doing a pretty good job of not being together before he had to do a thing. I didn't tell you either.

Damn him, though, for the years he stole. I don't see how I can ever be that hopeful man again. The world doesn't look the same to me.

I wish I could write a letter like I wrote when we were children and you were in Germany and I thought you were getting them. To babble all over the paper without KNOWING I was babbling all over the paper.

I wish I could say something without doubts rising up around it before the words are even finished.

It's hard to say even like this. I gave up.

I gave up.

That makes it sound easy. Like letting something drop. Like a raincoat. No, it was hard.

And now that makes it hard to say.

I do still care. I've spent so long walling it away somewhere that I wouldn't talk about.

I care.

I loved you.

Thinking of you now.

- Phoenix

He read it over again, scowling harder and harder as his eyes moved down the page, and dropped the ballpoint pen onto the floor with a frustrated sigh. Thought about throwing the book across the room.

Opened it up to a new blank page instead, fished a pencil out of the drawer, and started to draw.

August 20, 11:14am

He woke up at his desk late the next morning with a backache, a headache, and the everything-is-screwed-on-too-tight feeling that is the emotional equivalent of a hangover. Apparently Polly had decided to give him the evening to himself. He didn't want to move.

But Trucy would be home soon, and the place was cluttered and gloomy. His brain was cluttered and gloomy. He hissed to his feet, pulled all of the blinds open, and started to clean up.

August 20, 6:16am

He'd come in early. Absurdly early, taking a taxi rather than bother Franziska. The red car couldn't be back soon enough to suit him, but it had been knocked badly out of alignment, and being picky about who fixed it meant that there was no way that it could be rushed.

If Franziska wasn't in yet, there was no way Klavier would be.

It was a little much to be expected to work after yesterday, but apparently the criminals of the city didn't agree. Grateful at least for the distraction, he glanced over the array of documents awaiting his attention, picked the longest one, and after several minutes of staring out of the window at the traffic and the morning's yellow haze, actually began to read it. The only time he lifted his attention from it was when he stepped out to ask the head secretary to send his sister in as soon as she arrived.

August 20, 11:33am

He managed to immerse himself in the abstract and impersonal pages so thoroughly that he barely kept himself from jumping when Franziska finally walked up to his desk. As soon as he registered her presence, though, the words flew from his mouth. "I need to talk to you."

The next thing he noticed, after speaking, was how purposeful she looked. "Little brother, I need to talk to you as well."

Oh. The Fortress. Moving back from Germany. They were still significant in the back of his mind, but he couldn't bring himself to feel an urgency about them, not yet. "May I please speak to you now?"

She did look as though she wanted to object; the words could almost be read off her face. But after a few seconds of flickering silent argument, she relented. "If you feel you must - then please."

"I may have done something foolish."

"Probably." He looked up into her eyes, and her expression adjusted again, and she sat down in the chair opposite. "I won't hover. What is it?"

"I spoke to Wright yesterday. He came here."

"What did you speak about?"

"Kristoph Gavin, and the abrupt circumstances of my departure from Los Angeles."

"And he needed to be told. Wherein was the foolishness?"

He found himself reaching for one arm with the other, his old nervous habit. "I...may have communicated that I...my affections."

"You may have?"

"Without any grace at all. And not without the possibility of misinterpretation."

She sighed and leaned sideways. "Foolishness indeed, then. That is not the sort of statement to be made ambiguously. If I had dithered at Adrian we could have both dithered on until we were old ladies in crocheted shawls."

"I realize." He felt certain that his sister had gone through a stage of poor communication and loaded gestures, honestly, but there was no point to arguing about it.

"You will have to try again. I won't permit you not to."

"He left very shortly thereafter. Not before announcing his intention to return after he'd had an opportunity to organize his thoughts - but I don't know at this moment whether to dread his reappearance."

"You will have the opportunity to speak for yourself, when he does come back."

"Pardon?"

"You describe it so passively. If you cannot bear the thought of a particular result, then act in such a way as to bring about a different result. I should not have to be telling you anything so simple."

He blinked several times. "You're...correct, of course. Thank you."

"You are welcome. And this is Wright we are talking about. Whatever he may be doing at the moment, I assure you that he is not organizing his thoughts." She stood up again and went over to the dog's bed. "...At least Pescador has an orderly mind."

"He has a one-track mind. He'd like a walk."

"Not yet. I haven't had my chance to speak to you."

"No, you haven't. I beg your pardon."

After being given this implied permission, however, she remained silent and stroked Pess's ears. He waited, and seemingly, so did she.

"Franziska?"

She paused a little longer, then inhaled and spoke. "As soon as you arrived in Germany, I knew you needed to go back. But you were right to decide that Gavin's price for your doing so was too high. You could not have sacrificed Miss Fey, nor could you have sacrificed the public trust by allowing the villains you convicted to walk free."

"Thank you - for the positive assessment of my character."

His sister disregarded that. "If you were to return, some part of his equation needed to be disrupted."

She looked like a schoolgirl, reciting a basic and long-familiar lesson. Her tone of voice was almost the same as it had been when she had been an adolescent, reciting Manfred's lessons at the end of the day. But this was not a speech he'd ever heard before.

"Moving to protect everyone he might have endangered wasn't feasible. And I'm afraid I decided against having him killed or doing it myself."

He got a chill. "You even thought about it?"

"I'm sure YOU did."

It was true. He dropped his gaze in acknowledgement, and she continued.

"Likewise, replacing the Bar Association board was too problematic. There was no guarantee he wouldn't be able to manipulate new members as easily as he did the old ones, nor any way to be sure that he couldn't continue to direct the activities of a group he no longer officially belonged to.

"To rely on a metaphor, it wasn't possible to remove the prey, or the hunter, or the weapon. And since we are agreed that the justice system does serve a valuable purpose, the solution was not to remove the forest."

"Are there acorns somewhere in your metaphor?"

"Don't be silly. No acorns. But it took me longer than it ought to have to realize what could be removed. And even once I knew what it was...it was a terribly slow process. So slow that Kristoph removed himself by other means before it could be finished, and there was no need to delay our return...but it was close, little brother. And unlike the other options, it was something that…needed to be done anyway."

"What was it?" He was having a hard time understanding her, distracted as he was and as uncharacteristically vague as she was being.

"Your vulnerability to the weapon. Miles Edgeworth, you aren't so terrible as you believed you were." And with that she threw her arms around him and, very uncharacteristically, started to cry.

"Franziska, what -" He hugged her in return, a little awkwardly but with honest concern. In response she fidgeted her cellular phone open with one hand, called up some kind of document, and handed it to him before resuming the other half of the embrace. He had to look over her shoulder to see what was glowing in his hand. A long, long string of four-character codes, two letters, then a dash, then a number, followed by dates.

"These are...this is my entire caseload. Isn't it? Or up to a point. Everything from the beginning of my career up to Mia Fey's murder. What were you -"

"Everything." Her voice wobbled. "If there was proof that each and every one of these verdicts was appropriate, or reached without any kind of malfeasance on your part, then the board would have no grounds on which to disbar you. For Miles Edgeworth to be safe...we had to remove the Demon Prosecutor."

"You didn't - you didn't falsify- "

A fierce slap stung the left side of his face. "Of course not! We were PROVING your innocence, not inventing it."

"But you can't possibly be saying that I didn't come by that name through my own actions."

"You were...you were cruel. Icy. Arrogant. Sly. But not a predator. It is not a record to celebrate, but it isn't monstrous either."

"How would it even have been possible for you to prove that I hadn't done anything worth taking my badge away for? In some of these cases, honestly, if you know I was in the clear, you know more than I do."

"Come into my office, and you can have your explanation."

He glanced at his desk clock as he stood, and she saw him do it. "It is nearly noon, yes. And I have just arrived. I had someone to pick up at the airport." Pess followed them through the door, and the dog's nails made an interesting counterpoint to her high heels. If anyone in the bullpen noticed her streaky face, they were wise enough not to comment.

The first thing he noticed in Franziska's tidy office – the first thing that anyone would have noticed - was Detective Gumshoe. Not that that was strange; the man was standing in the center of the floor and beaming.

"It's over, sir!" He sounded gratified and almost incredulous. And energetic, even though he must have been waiting there for some time.

"Detective?" But the big man didn't respond, at least not verbally. He simply stepped back to reveal the third person in the room: a smiling young woman with black hair up in a ponytail. And as she flung herself at Edgeworth with a huge grin, all the stunned prosecutor could say was, "KAY FARADAY?"

She mimicked his tone. "Miles Edgeworth?"

"It's wonderful to see you, it's been much too long!" Too long indeed; his work with her seemed as though it had been part of another life.

"You're so right!" She had the gall to ruffle his hair before she let go.

"What have you been doing?"

"What have we been doing." Franziska stood in front of her desk, a triumphant, perhaps even mischievous, smile breaking through her overwrought expression and warming the shine in her eyes. "I couldn't clear your name alone. Legal expertise is one thing - but I no longer had access to all of the records here, nor an acceptable excuse to request so many."

Gumshoe broke in. "But I did, sir. And if there were any black marks on your record, the police department was complicit too. After all, we round up the suspects and identify the cases...so some housecleaning was in order. Clearly. Sir."

Franziska spoke again. "But there remained information that had to be obtained through-"

Kay actually giggled then, and spoke over her. "-UNOFFICIAL channels. Which is why your sister contacted me. There's really nothing like a brilliant master thief, is there, when you're doing a little quiet research." She stared at him, bright and challenging.

He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "You'll have to tell me EVERYTHING. But let me ask, first, what the estate being sold had to do with it?"

"You may not have been corrupt, little brother, but you were ruthless. Some of the sentences that were handed down were as harsh as they could possibly have been. Where they seemed, perhaps, disproportionate, compared to how similar cases elsewhere were handled...we tried to provide some anonymous recompense to the people involved and their families. Investments and such."

It was starting to seem real. "And you examined every single one?"

"All of yours. Next...after a bit of rest for everyone...are mine. I take responsibility for my decisions, but Papa has much to answer for, in terms of the course of study he chose to provide. I am only glad I was able to - complete my education elsewhere." Lingering business. I see.

It was difficult to speak, and he wanted to sit down. He felt like an actor. "Franziska...what you've done...what all three of you have done...is tremendous. I can't express my gratitude in words of the right scale. But any assistance that you need, or want, with the remaining investigations, I absolutely will provide. Anything. Just tell me what."

She smiled. "I will. But we've gotten very good at this ourselves. After all..." And Kay and Gumshoe smiled like their faces would crack when she looked him straight in the eye and switched languages. "…imouto to meitantei to kaitou wa...Yatagarasu desu."

August 20, 2:52pm

The agency wasn't pristine, but then, it never was, and he had at least restored a semblance of cleanliness and order to it before setting off on foot to the grocery store to bring back a few of Trucy's favorites.

And once I have a car, I can start making these trips to the GOOD grocery store. The sun was uncomfortably warm now that he was carrying the lopsided bags, but the little distractions of having to adjust them and noticing beads of sweat start at the back of his neck kept his mind occupied. Think about Trucy now. Miles later.

The bag with the cans and bottles gave an alarming lurch and ripped down one side just as he came up on the building, and so between getting through the bottom door and getting up the stairs without having it dump itself out completely and getting through the top door, he was on the verge of a therapeutic burst of profanity.

And when he let the bags slither to the floor not a moment too soon, he was very glad that he hadn't indulged, because Trucy and Apollo were standing by the couch under a big handmade blue banner reading CONGRATULATIONS, ACE ATTORNEY! and smiling broadly, and as he blinked - she hadn't been due back for another forty-five minutes and he had checked his watch, he was sure of it - a pair of blue paper airplanes soared across the room in opposite directions, scattering iridescent confetti.

His first thought was that they'd been looking in his sketchbook, or something, and were responding to what had happened with Miles. Which was a bit weird and premature if not un-bunny-like.

And then he saw the envelope that Trucy was waving. A big white one, kind of like his college acceptance letters had come in, except that when he took it from her outstretched hand (on the second try, because she was jumping up and down) the printing on it read California Bar Association.

"CONGRATULATIONS, Daddy, congratulations, oh, I knew it, this is such a great SURPRISE, why didn't you call me yesterday?!"

"Yesterday?"

She gave him an odd look. "Yes, YESTERDAY AFTERNOON when you could have looked up whether you passed on the computer. I was so nervous, too, I thought you'd call and then you didn't and I couldn't tell whether it was because you were WAITING to tell me or because you didn't WANT to tell me..." She had to stop to breathe at that point.

He shot Apollo a why-didn't-you-tell-me look, and got after-that?-don't-be-dumb in reply.

"Honestly, honey? Yesterday was just...distracting. And I'd forgotten about the electronic results, anyway...But I'm a lawyer again?"

"You're unbelievable."

Apollo spoke up then. "You know the mailman didn't bring this, right? Truce caught an earlier train and we checked the results at the library and then went to the Bar Association offices to get it for you."

"I, uh...thanks. When did you make the banner?"

Trucy rejoined the conversation. "Oh, months ago. I had it in my room behind the dresser. We would have needed it EVENTUALLY."

He'd been slitting the envelope open with a thumbnail as she spoke, and his focus shifted to the contents. A formal letter of congratulations, the wording of which he could almost have sworn he remembered. A couple of forms to be filled out and sent back promptly, though not at this exact second, thanks. A green piece of paper detailing the oath he'd have to take and telling him there'd be a different pink piece of paper saying where he could go take the oath and get his badge, according to his ZIP code. No piece of pink paper, which was disproportionately frightening. But a handwritten note on a much smaller sheet telling him, Phoenix Wright, specifically, where he could go for his.

"Defense attorneys take the oath at the Prosecutors' Office now? Isn't that weird?"

Apollo looked amused. "Defense attorneys, plural, regular, don't. YOU do. I took mine at City Hall."

Oh.

"Should I arrange your embarrassing celebratory dinner for tomorrow? I think it's too late for Maya and Pearl to catch a train down today. I can make all the calls."

"Would you? Actually?"

The shorter man smirked. "Sure thing. But you've got something else to do before then. Get in the car."

"What?"

"I can call from my cell outside the store. Come on, Truce, drag him if you need to."

"The STORE?"

"And after that, the barber's."

August 20, 3:44pm

As he stood in the mirrored dressing room in what would be a very handsome new blue suit, once it was altered, he overheard the two clerks talking outside. They obviously thought they were whispering.

"What do you think about this one?"

"I was WONDERING! He looks so - SEEDY!"

"With the beard stubble and the hat? I know! It's terrible of me to say, but you think maybe...um…you know how defense lawyers will buy suits for their clients, to make them look more respectable?"

"Oh my God, do you THINK?"

He exploded with years of pent-up mirth, in front of his own bewildering reflection, and didn't care if they knew he'd heard or if they knew why he was laughing.