The Earth King Has Invited You to Labyrinthia

Disclaimer: I own nothing in this very strange crossover.

Note: Breaking away from the actual game rather seriously now, so would appreciate feedback. Not that I haven't been getting remarkable feedback already. Thank you so very much.

Wright hadn't called him that night. They had agreed upon that call time together. Edgeworth had carved out an allotted time from his very busy schedule in order to receive that call. After all of that effort, Wright hadn't called. He wasn't a man for the superstitious drivel Wright spouted about spirit channeling and luck, not at all. But he did go on about friendship and having faith in others, and the missed call still put a sour taste in his mouth. It nagged at his thoughts the rest of the day. It wasn't an omen; it was just a bad sign. The thought haunted him for the rest of that night while he was trying to sleep. Wright didn't forget to talk to his friends. Something was off. Very off.

His intuition proved right when an inquiry to the cruise company in the morning turned up that Wright and Fey had boarded the ship, but never departed.

The afternoon had him in Republic City, warrant in hand and Gumshoe at his side. He was no metalbending elite officer like Republic City's Finest- the man couldn't metalbend at all- but in matters of delicate investigating, his input would be vital. He knew Gumshoe would keep his sights on the case, especially when the witnesses they interviewed turned up tight-lipped and unsure. Some of the passengers aboard had seen a couple matching Wright and Fey's descriptions; a few more had seen them defending a blonde girl from an overzealous prosecutor. They hadn't seen Wright or Fey since. They hadn't even seen the prosecutor at all, before or after. He just seemed to disappear right after that commotion when the boat when under that one bridge.

That bridge would be the next stop.

That bridge was where they met the annoying red-haired man.

He introduced himself without asking by the name Randall Ascot. He wasn't the police, he wasn't a private investigator, he wasn't really an anything other than an obstruction to their case. He still gleefully filled them in on all his amateur detective work which led him to this bridge. His friend hadn't called him, see, had gone on a trip and was told to check in on him if he didn't make contact. Edgeworth was just about to write it off as a coincidence until Ascot's voice cracked in panic and he pleaded to know if Edgeworth had heard anything about two people, a gentleman in a top hat and a little boy in blue, who had last been seen on this bridge a day ago.

Ascot quickly joined them, and Edgeworth pressed him for what information he had. His friend, a Mr. Hershel Layton, had a terrible adventuring habit, always running off to helpless cases in the name of assistance. Edgeworth understood Ascot's frustrations. As a result, Layton made it a habit to inform his family whenever he was leaving. When Layton hadn't answered his hotel phone, his family called Ascot to go and check on him. When the hotel said Layton and his young assistant- and Edgeworth connected to the man more- had never even checked in, he'd chartered a zeppelin and got to the city overnight.

And now here they both were, eh? A prosecutor, a detective, and an archeologist on the prowl for their missing loved ones! What a story it would make! Ascot even had an address to look into, a rental apartment for a Mr. Carmine Accidenti. It was right down the road from here, very suspicious! He hadn't gotten to it yet, but what intrigue! What an adventure!

Edgeworth mentally dialed up his efforts. He must find Wright. Quickly. And get out of Republic City.

Edgeworth was appropriately humiliated and horrified when the trio found the apartment immolated and under investigation.

Badge-flashing and warrants got him nowhere. Even for the police, the officers on the scene were tight-lipped and obfuscating. Gumshoe pulled the two aside and informed them that the lingo they were using meant they'd been privately paid to keep every little detail a complete secret. All his questions were going to do was get them funny looks and questions from their superiors. If they were going to get information, they were going to have to do it all tricky-like.

In the meantime, Ascot popped into a house and called the nearest hospital and got Carmine Accidenti's room number.

Give the annoying man credit, his charm came in handy.

Accidenti was in terrible shape. Covered in bandages and only partially healed from severe burns, his talking was not entirely lucid. He raved on and on about underground tunnels, secrets in books, hidden machines, drugs he couldn't specify, and "Espella". Gumshoe kept one hand on Accidenti's bandaged shoulder and another shoe-less foot on the ground. His seismic sense barely worked through bandages, a bed, and the floor, but from everything Gumshoe could sense, he was telling the complete truth. Or at least, he believed everything he said was the truth. Ascot scribbled everything down in a notepad. Edgeworth mentally tried to connect the rambling ravings, but after four minutes of disjointed and morphine-muddled mumblings, Accidenti fell asleep from exhaustion.

Edgeworth, confined by the law, bemoaned their luck.

Ascot, liberated from social decency, promptly rifled through Carmine's jacket and pants pockets which were slung over a nearby chair. Inside were a great many drafts of a letter addressed to one Hershel Layton and a flask of hot spirit water. Along with the drafts, Ascot found page after page of notes furiously taken on paper scraps, pocket journals, and vellum. Maps, flowcharts, idea webs, thought puzzle solutions: all of them given equal weight and rammed against each other on the page in a desperate attempt to save space. It looked the work of a madman to Edgeworth, but Randall turned them over and deciphered them as if he were fluent in the language. A few threads popped up repeatedly: owls, books, a town called Labyrinthia, a company called Labrelum, and men named Newton Belduke and Arthur Cantabella.

Gumshoe looked up the name in a nearby phone book and set off himself for the main office. Pleasant chatter with the secretary ensued. He didn't mention he was a cop, just that he was from the Fire Nation and his buddy knew a little about the guy. The secretary, charmed to know something, told him a lot: Labrelum made pharmaceuticals, their co-founders were a Mr. Cantabella and a Mr. Belduke, and despite being a relatively young company they were doing quite well and hoped to expand outside of the Republic City and surrounding territories. The company heads were, of course, too busy to talk to just anyone. Mr. Belduke was out of the country on sales, while Mr. Cantabella was only in the office sporadically even on a good day. He had health complications, the secretary didn't really know the details but Cantabella coughed a lot. Probably something in his lungs, which was weird. He made drugs for a living, why would he let himself be sick? Well, maybe he couldn't help it. It was Belduke that originated their big money-making formula, Mr. Cantabella was more of the marketing man. The conversation wandered after that, but Gumshoe had names and leads to follow.

While Gumshoe went to chat, Edgeworth and Ascot left to hunt. The phone book must have been out of date, as the Belduke house was long empty, almost decrepit. Signs of life remained, like a little girl's pedal car and a garden trowel stuck in a flower bed. However everything had long since grown over with weeds and grass. Edgeworth found himself the lookout to Ascot's brazen disregard for the laws. Only his desire for answers allowed him to let Ascot slip into an unlocked window on the alley side of the house. How... compromising. He hoped Ascot's obnoxiously white suit got dirty.

Inside, Ascot could easily piece together life in the Belduke household like a child's crossword puzzle, and he relayed everything back to Edgeworth in detailed notes and a few stolen trinkets. A nuclear family of a man, his wife, and their little daughter Eve. Eve was very young when they left, with a little friend about her age who came over for sleepovers and sometimes stayed for dinner, if the extra high chair and booster seat were any indication. Newton and his wife were both fond of plants, especially flowers. The house was decorated with them. They were pressed into books. Eve had storybooks about them, some of them written and illustrated by Arthur Cantabella and "starring" Eve and her little friend- Espella! There she was! Newton had even made a career out of his love for herbology, bottling and pickling and extracting the essences from various plants he'd grown in the back yard.

Then something happened. Something terrible happened to Belduke's wife. Her things laid completely untouched while Belduke's and Eve's things were hurriedly packed. Clothing and toiletries gone, empty spaces in the closets where luggage had been, and much to Randall's dismay, food left in the refrigerator long after the power had been turned off. Eve couldn't have been older than 6 when it all happened, the poor dear. They had never come back.

Ascot came away with a few odds and ends, the most important being a little black book. In it were names, almost a hundred names, but only one of significance. Arthur Cantabella's address, the one from the phone book, had been crossed out. He must have moved at some point.

It was late by the time they regrouped, with Edgeworth booking them all rooms in a hurry so they wouldn't be separated. The next morning metaphorically slammed them into a wall as they struggled to find that address. The house number was a single digit, and despite pouring over every map they could find, none of them cold even locate the street. It took Edgeworth's eye wandering over the bay area in a fit of insanity to find it. The "street name" was no such thing. Cantabella made his home on a private island in the middle of Yue Bay.

Gumshoe cursed the rich and their extravagance, and Ascot acted offended for a moment before Edgeworth pulled them both back into the chase.

After this, another wall. Not a single person was willing to take them out to that island. Oh, everyone had something to say about it, of course. Major ferries didn't go out to the island, but complained that it was an eyesore. The dark grey concrete tower jutting out of the rock was kind of spooky. Local boaters and fishermen told how Cantabella had the entire place built around one little heap o' nothin' rock with a water spout some twenty years ago, just as his company was getting big. The giant tower of a boathouse was eccentric, but it made them a little money whenever Cantabella paid them to bring groceries from the shore. Never anything perishable, oddly. Even the airbenders on Air Temple Island remembered that Cantabella used to have a wife and daughter who never left the house. The younger monks would fly over to the tower and talk to them through the windows on the top floor. That was over ten years ago now, though, and they hadn't seen either of them since. Only Arthur Cantabella still lived there, and they only knew that because he'd get angry and yell at them if they flew too close to the windows. Rumors bounced around that she'd divorced him, or that they'd died, but none of them really knew.

The mental math, and it couldn't have been a coincidence, put all their disappearances around the same time. The Beldukes and the Cantabellas over a decade ago, and now their friends at this point in time, all gone from the face of the earth. Answers needed to be found fast, before Phoenix and the others were lost to time and bureaucracy.

Waiting until nightfall, Edgeworth had Gumshoe and Ascot meet him at the smallest boat launch on Yue Bay. He bent the cold water of the bay into an ice canoe and quietly paddled them out to Cantabella's island in the dark. He didn't find himself waterbending in Capitol City often- it was hard to casually fling around water in the center of an active caldera- so he didn't pretend like the opportunity to bend his native element wasn't a thrill and a privilege.

Ascot showed his gratitude by throwing himself out of the boat as soon as they made landfall and complaining.

"What am I supposed to tell Angela when I get home? 'Oh, sorry dear, wish I could've sent Hershel your regards, but I spent the trip breaking into houses and freezing my arse off for an hour in an ice kayak in the middle of the night'!"

Gumshoe settled well enough on the weathered concrete shore of the island. Whatever little rock the place was built on, it wasn't visible anymore. The tower was straight concrete down past the water line. "Wasn't that cold to me, pal."

"And now I'm wet where I was sitting on the-"

"If I may remind everyone," Edgeworth quietly commanded, "That we are, in face, trying to be somewhat inconspicuous." He hooked his hands out and bent the water out of all their clothes.

Ascot indignantly crossed his arms. "We're already on the windward side, facing away from the city. I don't see why you're so nervous."

Edgeworth crossed his own arms. "I'm not nervous. We are breaking and entering. Things like this require great caution, or so I have been lead to believe. You, meanwhile, are wearing reflective white clothing."

"It can't be helped," Randall sighed with a toss of his wild hair. "This is my burglary suit."

"Hey, pal, you do remember that we're cops, right?" Gumshoe whimpered. "It ain't like we're common citizens just 'cause it's not our jurisdiction..."

"Between petty thievery and the lives of our friends-"

Edgeworth raised a hand. Spirits but Ascot reminded him of someone back home... "Gentlemen... I must insist we hurry. My willingness to bend the law is being stretched to its breaking point."

"Right." Randall secured the straps to his backpack. "Mr. Gumshoe, if you would?"

"I sure hope we're savin' Wright from something dangerous..." Gumshoe set his hands against the sheer concrete wall. "Or else we're getting in a lot of trouble for this..."

Concrete was hard to bend. It was like moving a spoon through thick batter, but unlike batter, concrete could shatter if moved improperly. Gumshoe rolled his palms and shifted his feet against the floor. Rooted like this, he could feel the little eddies and whorls where the concrete had been poured. He only had to pull them out of the wall just enough for Randall to get a foothold, and together they could slowly make their way to the tower's only window at the very top.

Ascot, for his part, masterfully scaled the steep incline. His eyes were trained for this sort of work, seeing the slight change in the concrete from its reflection in the bright moonlight. He kept moving as the footholds disappeared behind him, feeling gravity tugging at his back the higher he went, until he could put his fingers on the windowsill. He made the last stretch in one big leap and shimmied onto the narrow ledge. It took a wiggle and his bank card to pop open the lock, but once he had it, he was off like a shot into the dark room.

His pocket torch held him over until he could find the lightswitch. The room was a mess of papers, books, and curiousities rounded up into their own piles. Signalled by the light flipping on, Gumshoe suddenly popped into the room via a column of water, followed by a winded and damp Edgeworth on his own.

"If it weren't..." he gasped, "For the full moon..."

"And excellent timing besides." Randall's attention pulled to the window, and he shut it tight behind them. "There's a storm rolling in. We have until it passes to search the house undisturbed, no doubt. Even the police wouldn't be out here in that weather."

"We're the police!" Gumshoe stated, offended. "And we're out in that weather!"

"You're the police, Mr. Gumshoe," Randall reminded him. "I'm the one who's opening all the doors you don't have the nerve to open yourself."

They both went silent, awkwardly looking to each other for the interruption that didn't come.

"Edgeworth?" Ascot asked, miffed. "Aren't you going to tell us to be quiet? You skipped your cue!"

"Look at this."

Edgeworth had simply taken the first book he'd put his hands on and opened it, then set it down on a desk for the other two to view. It was a photo album. The picture in the center, the largest of otherwise normal-sized 5x7s, showed two men, two women, and two little girls. It fit their investigations so far. "Do you think one of these is Cantabella?"

Gumshoe hovered over his shoulder. Ascot hooked around his arm and pointed to the taller of the two men in the photo. Blonde, wizened, pale. "Probably that one. He has that look."

Edgeworth scowled. This conversation had the potential to go in... unsavoury directions. "What look?"

"That look!" Of the part of the Earth States that borders Water Tribe territory and you find names like 'Cantabella'. You have the lighter skin from the Earth States and the yellow hair that comes from being close to the spirit portals. Look at his moppet." Randall pointed to the little blond child with him. "Blue eyes, like her mother here. They have North written all over them."

"So you think this is Belduke and Cantabella?"

"Not just them, but their whole families."

"They do have cute little girls," Gumshoe noted. "Look at their little pink shoes."

"Very fashionable for little girls 10 years ago." Edgeworth noted the translucent jelly-like plastic. "Our timelines match up."

Gumshoe tried his luck at grabbing something important and just took the first thing that he could see. Either everything in this office was important, or it was dumb luck, but whatever it was it spilled all over the floor in a heap.

People, dozens of people, all marked "PENDING" in big red letters on the paper next to their pictures. Nearly written off as employee portfolios, Edgeworth's attention honed on the fact that nearly every photo looked... cadaverous. Every were uniformly unfocused and blank. All photos were taken against a stucco- "No, that's clay!"- an earthen wall.

"A clay wall? In this day and age?" Edgeworth held up a paper to read. A name, a birth date, another date which seemed to average ten years ago but not consistently, a "reason for admittance" and a list of... transgressions, which ranged from "bumped a machine" to "questioning" and "actively seeking time away from others". Underneath this list was stamped the word "SHADE" and a printed list of chores. It was all relatively innocuous things, like "fruit picking" and "laundry". None of the pieces together made sense.

Gumshoe scratched his neck. "I'm confused."

"It's paperwork through the looking glass..." was all Edgeworth could muster, a more flowery way of saying that he was confused.

Ascot poured over the files with an intense, silence interest. "I know some of these names. They're all missing persons. Some of them years old, presumed dead."

That shook the prosecutor. "How do you know?"

"I was a missing person..." he spoke through a dark shadow over his eyes. That jubilant smirk was gone, and for the first time, Edgeworth could see the age marking his face. This fellow was well older than him, and the grave worry in his face showed it. "For eighteen years, presumed dead. I try to make knowing missing people my business."

Edgeworth's respect for him quickly went from the floor to through the roof. "Admirable."

"It doesn't explain why all of these are here..." Ascot continued. "Not unless Cantabella was the reason they-"

The next file belonged to Luke Triton, and Ascot screamed.

All the files were there, for all four of them, hurriedly hand-written and all bearing a blank-eyed photo. Swaths of the papers were left black, nothing at all but white space. Maya Fey and Phoenix Wright's were particularly, suspiciously, bare.

All of them dated two days ago.

Ascot threw the files into his bag as the door to the office burst open, and a wave of men shrouded in violet cloaks flooded the office space. Gumshoe cracked a few on the head with books and a chair, but more would pour in every second. Only Edgeworth whipping water in from the windowsill and filling the room with mist shrouded them enough to run for the door, and the three of them descended the stairs past a child's room and into the base of the tower, down, down further than they had climbed to enter the window, into the dark...