May 30

Morix Law Offices

6:30 PM

CotoliMorix

When we got to the agency, Victoria practically ran up to the door of the building. She gestured for me to follow her, and I trailed behind her at a much slower pace. I was ready to hear what everyone had to say, but I was somewhat nervous about it as well. I swallowed nervously before stepping into the elevator, letting the soft buzz claim my senses. Victoria didn't say anything while we were in there, but I could see her fidgeting out of the corner of my eye, and I realized that she was somehow even more nervous than I was. I hadn't even thought about that being possible, but Victoria found new ways to surprise me.

The doors to the elevator opened when we were on the right floor. I watched Victoria dash out, and I followed her, shoving my hands into my pockets. I fidgeted nervously with my Magatama, praying that the world was kind to us with this revelation. I had a somewhat bad feeling about it, to be honest. I couldn't say why that was, but I couldn't bring myself to be too excited. My stomach was tied in a tight knot.

When we walked into the main room of that floor of the agency, I could see Lily, Deirdre, Yuri, and Chrysalis scattered about. Lily was pacing back and forth frantically. Deirdre was writing something down while Yuri looked over her shoulder. Chrysalis was sitting in her own chair, staring blankly at her hands. She seemed numb to the world around her, which wasn't entirely foreign to Chrysalis, though it was concerning regardless.

"Mr. Morix!" Lily chirped, halting her pacing once she realized I had arrived. "Hey there, Victoria!"

"I guess now is the time to start explaining everything that we found," Yuri murmured, nervous openly for one of the first times since I had met her. Yuri was headstrong and confident most of the time, and seeing her quiet and anxious was unsettling. I sat down to make sure that I didn't feel too sick when she started talking. My bad feeling was only worsening, and I didn't think I could keep up with it.

"What did you find exactly?" Victoria asked, tilting her head to one side as she looked at everyone. While she was waiting, Lily flopped dramatically onto the couch, and Victoria sat down next to her soon after. Concern was written clearly on Victoria's face, and I could tell that she knew just as well as I did that we were in for a wild ride.

"Well, we have two bits of good news and one piece of bad news," Yuri began, trying to fake a smile as she looked in my direction. "The good news is that we figured out who Marcus Moore looks like. Plus, we were able to put a bunch of other information about him together, which means we have a pretty complete understanding of what he has been up to in the past few months."

"The bad news is that the person who happens to be Marcus Moore is far from pleasant," Chrysalis sighed.

"It's Cormous," Deirdre eventually spit out after the silence got to be so long and heavy it was suppressive. "Cormous Arme is the one and only Marcus Moore... Or rather, he was."

Victoria let out a yelp of surprise, and I knew that if she had been drinking anything in that moment, it would have wound up splattered all over the ground. Her face had grown incredibly pale faster than I knew was possible. "Wait, really?! Cormous was the same person as..." Her voice trailed off, and she slammed her palm against her forehead. A million thoughts were swirling through her head at once.

"We didn't fully realize it until after we started to compare pictures. When we did figure it out though... Well, as I'm sure you can guess, we were far from happy," Deirdre began. "We were so focused on trying to forget about Cormous, to shove him out of our lives, that we didn't recognize the picture until we had one to compare it to. Cormous Arme is an anagram for Marcus Moore. I'm sure you remember the case where Detective Erikson was accused of murder, yes? The culprit was an assassin working with the Emsthorpe group, and he was using an anagram of his actual namae to hide his true identity. The same is the case here, meaning that Cormous, or rather, Marcus, worked as part of the Emsthorpe ring while he was alive."

"In fact, he was probably still working for them when he decided to join up with our agency. After all, he wanted to work here or at Blocker Law, two agencies known for being involved with prominent Oracle cases. It's obvious he wanted information on them. When he couldn't get a place at Blocker Law, he moved here," Chrysalis began, her arms crossed over her chest. I could see her nails digging into her arm as she spoke. "He was sent here to gather information about Oracle and then report back to his leader. However, he didn't exactly get the chance to do all of that since he was killed by Nevada not long ago."

"He joined us with the intention of betraying us to begin with... He had to die, because if he didn't, he would have gone after the rest of us," Deirdre explained. "I can't believe we ever worked with someone like that."

"He was lying to us about everything. I mean, he hid his true thoughts on Oracle until after he had secured the job, and then he was happily open about his thoughts on them. He came here with the sole purpose of manipulating and betraying us. I can't believe we fell for his lies when he was somebody like that underneath it all. When Cormous first died, I wanted to make peace with him, but... He's clearly undeserving of such," Lily huffed angrily.

"It all makes sense if we think about it like that... I can't believe all of this was going on right under our noses for so long! I didn't realize this was happening, but... I really wish I had caught onto it sooner. I couldn't have asked him about it without being put at risk, but... Oh, you know what I mean," Victoria said, her thoughts coming out in a messy vomit of words. "I don't know how else I can properly explain how I'm feeling at the moment."

"Oh, we understand it fully," Chrysalis assured her. "But that's not even all there is to keep in mind regarding Cormous. This next bit is something Lily will probably need to explain because she was involved with the nature preserve case, but... We realized that something from the current day is heavily involved with what happened back then. You're going to want to hear this for sure."

"You have me a bit nervous, but I'm intrigued," I admitted, letting out a small laugh with hopes it would properly mask my nerves. I felt like I was going to be sick, but I wasn't going to let anybody else know that. All I could do was try to keep my true emotions under wraps until after we had figured out a way to solve this case. I wanted to hear more, and me getting sick would only put us even further behind schedule than we already were.

"I don't know if you remember hearing about this or not, but when I was on the case at the nature preserve, the killer was being blackmailed. We never figured out who was doing the blackmailing since the victim of it didn't have a clue as to who it was. In the end, the police force never figured out the truth, and it was dropped just as quickly as it came up. However, we were doing some thinking, and we believe that Cormous was the one doing the blackmailing. We think that he wanted to ensure that nobody got too close to figuring out the truth behind his true identity. He doesn't seem to have a specific connection to the culprit from that case, but it wouldn't surprise me if it had something to do with the Emsthorpe ring," Lily explained.

"If he did something to go against the Emsthorpe criminals, then it would make sense that Cormous blackmailed him. Then, like Lily said, there's the possibility that somebody involved was getting too close to the truth. Maybe he blackmailed the culprit of that case to ensure he killed the victim. After all, the victim was an investigator," Chrysalis murmured.

"Let's say for a moment that the victim of that case figured it out or was otherwise aware that something wrong was happening involving Cormous. Cormous then blackmailed the culprit of the case into killing him, using the grudge the killer had against the victim to cover up the true motive behind the case. It would have gone entirely unknown if the killer hadn't spoken up about it when he was being arrested. It all played directly into Cormous' hands, and it allowed him to get away with it without any issues," Deirdre continued to tell us.

"How did you figure all of this out?" Victoria asked. "I know that you had a long time to think through everything, but I still never would have imagined that you could sit down for a while and just determine that all of this was true. You must have started somewhere here."

"When we were comparing profiles that would match with Marcus Moore's picture, we came across his photo. Lily set it aside not because she thought he was the man, but because his being blackmailed by an unknown figure struck her as odd. It wasn't until after we had figured it out who Marcus was that we started talking about it," Yuri explained.

"I guess that we got a bit caught up in thinking about all the possibilities, which is why we didn't get the chance to contact you until pretty late in the investigation process. I apologize for not reaching out since that was kind of my fault, but I hope that all of this new information even slightly makes up for all that," Lily told us, a small and awkward smile on her face. She rubbed at the back of her neck nervously, refusing to meet my gaze fully.

"You don't need to apologize," I assured her. "I think that it's all okay. After all, we did eventually get the information we needed, and I would say that it was worth the wait. This is all important stuff to keep in mind. Did you four happen to take some notes on what you found? If not, that's alright, and we can write some things down ourselves, but there's no need to make unnecessary work for ourselves, right?"

"You're lucky I know you well, because I knew you were going to ask that," Chrysalis smirked. She reached onto the floor near her feet and picked up a notebook with many scribbled notes on the front page. She handed it to me, and when she did, I realized how messy the floor was.

There were countless pictures scattered about, leaving next to no space for anyone to stand, much less walk. Lily's pacing from before seemed much more impressive now that I was aware of how messy the area had become. None of the papers had been touched during her panic either, as none of them had significant dents from where a foot had likely gone. I couldn't believe it had taken me so long to notice it, but there wasn't anything I could do about it now. After all, there were far more important things to worry about in that moment.

"What exactly did you write down?" Victoria asked, looking to Chrysalis with a curious gaze. She didn't move to come and read over my shoulder, instead staying where she was. I got the feeling she didn't trust herself to come and stand beside me without stepping on one of the many papers scattered around on the carpet. I couldn't blame her, as I wouldn't be able to trust myself with such either. I was simply far too clumsy, and I would find some way to trip over my own feet and mess everything up.

"I made notes about how Cormous' name was an anagram of Marcus Moore's. I wrote down why Cormous joined the agency as well in case it was needed in the trial. I don't know if you'll want to add anything to the notes, but there are many pages on that notepad if you decide there's something else you want to keep in mind," Chrysalis replied. "On the second page, you can find an explanation of what we know about Cormous' involvement with the case at the nature preserve. Underneath that explanation, you can find the theory about what he did to blackmail the culprit, though there's not really much evidence on it."

"You figured this out when the police force was too incompetent to do so," I smiled, shooting Chrysalis a teasing smirk. "You sure are smart. All four of you. I'm truly impressed with how much you did while we were out investigating."

"We weren't going to let this case get the better of us. We're no slouches when it comes to finding new information," Chrysalis told me, a small grin appearing on her face.

"I don't know what we're going to do in court tomorrow," Victoria sighed. "I'm so glad that we have all this new information, don't get me wrong, but I have a bad feeling about this. I mean, we were trying to show that Marcus Moore was the culprit, but we can't exactly have him come to testify when he's dead."

"There's always the option of spirit channeling," Yuri offered, looking back and forth between Lily and Chrysalis.

The speed at which the word 'no' flew from their lips was impressive. Chrysalis and Lily met eyes immediately, having come to the same conclusion that channeling him was a horrible idea.

"I never said it was a good idea," Yuri cut in. "In fact, I would argue that it's one of the worst ideas ever had by any human on this planet."

"I'm glad that we've all come to that conclusion," Lily sighed in relief, shaking her head slowly. "I was really worried there for a second that you would actually want us to try doing that. It would be bad to let a known criminal out, even if it was just for a short little testimony. If something goes wrong, like he gets away, somebody could get killed. I think it would be best if we just figured out the truth without his influence. In fact, that would be perfect, because I never want to see his face or hear his voice ever again."

"I think that Cormous having a false identity makes an incredible amount of sense," Chrysalis remarked. "Cotoli, I'm sure you'll remember this. After the agency split up, we had to deal with the case surrounding Cormous' death. I tried to channel him, but I was unable to do so. Doesn't this make the reason for that crystal clear?" Chrysalis asked.

"That's right," I murmured, looking down and nodding slowly. We hadn't been the main investigators on that case, but we were still involved, and that was all we needed as far as I could tell. That got us to figure out that Cormous couldn't be channeled, which was what really mattered at the end of the day.

"I tried to channel Cormous during the investigation into his murder. However, I wasn't able to do so, and we weren't able to figure out why that was. I assumed at the time that somebody else had channeled him already, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. In actuality, Cormous had never given us the proper name. That breaks one of the two rules of channeling, and with that hole in the ritual, it failed no matter how many times we tried it," Chrysalis said.

"In order to channel a spirit, you need a picture and a name. You can have all the pictures in the world, but if you can't get their name right, you're not going to be able to pull it off. It makes a lot of sense that channeling Cormous would fail given how he hid so much from us. Honestly, it's for the best that you didn't pull off that channeling. After all, you weren't aware at the time that he was a liar and a scoundrel, and it was definitely better that we figured that out after he had lost a physical form," Lily commented. "I wouldn't want to deal with him getting violent. It would simply be far too risky if we figured it out while he was being channeled."

"In the end, I guess everything worked out," Yuri murmured. "Well, as much as it can work out when you realize that one of your coworkers was not only a liar and a scoundrel, but a spy and an assassin as well. I never thought I would say something like that, but here we are. Welcome to Morix Law Offices, where nothing goes as you would expect, and you don't know what's going on half the time."

"We know what's going on more than half the time," Victoria told Yuri, frowning deeply. "I'd say that it's more of a three-quarters split. This case is just... It's something special, to say the least."

"And by 'special', you mean you're happy I'm not on it," Yuri teased with a small laugh. "I like it when cases are nice and straightforward, and it seems like this one is determined to be anything but that. I'm not surprised given how long ago it took place, but you get the point."

"There is a lot to keep in mind on this case though," Deirdre remarked. "Hm... I'm not sure what we're going to do as far as pinning down a culprit. After all, we can say as much as we want on the subject of Cormous committing the murder, but I feel like we'll have to find some evidence along the way."

"I guess that we'll have to ask Ghastly to help us out," I sighed, shaking my head. "He's surely used to this by now, but still... I wish we had more to show him. Our little investigation isn't official. If the police force had looked into this, it would have been considered as good as gold. However, that doesn't apply since we were the ones who did it. How unfortunate."

"We did figure out quite a bit of good information though. Even if it isn't an official investigation, we still have an extra tidbit to go into the trial with," Victoria pointed out. "If we can tell the courtroom what we've learned, maybe we'll be able to sway the watchers one way or another. I bet Chief Prosecutor Bespoke will be able to help us out as well, and he can hopefully help to tilt the trial in our favor."

"I'm glad to hear that we know what we're doing, even if we have to deal with the issues of conducting an unofficial investigation. Providing an explanation for something that the police force doesn't know about will get us some reputation points, and since we're already trusted in this city, the judge will be more inclined to believe us," Chrysalis said. "This should be able to help us out, though I don't know how much good it will do. You know how some people are. No evidence, no belief."

"However, we do have an extra advantage here since nobody else has evidence either. This case took place months ago, so long ago that the now-dead culprit was alive at the time. With the minimal evidence issue, people will be more willing to go along with conjecture," Victoria pointed out. "I think that we can use this for sure. If the case had been more recent, it wouldn't have worked out this way."

"We would have had more evidence to prove all of this, though it may not have ended well. I suppose it's all about how you take it," Lily shrugged. "Now, let's figure out a game plan. We have a lot of strategizing to do before we can go into the trial. I'm pretty happy that I'm not on the official defense team for this case. It would be stressful as can be to come up with a plan based on so little evidence for a case that took place so long ago."

"You left us here to suffer? I'm wounded!" Victoria exclaimed, placing one hand over her chest in mock exasperation. She let out a joking laugh a few seconds later before continuing to speak. "I can't blame you for making that choice. This case isn't going to be easy to work through. All we really can do is say what we believe happened, and there aren't any witnesses who saw anything of note aside from Ms. Quell to back up our thoughts. We're stuck in a rough place."

"I think that we'll be able to pull it off though," I assured her with a small smile. "Allow me to rephrase that. I won't let this case end horribly for us. We've come too far, and we have too many people counting on us to give up now. I am not going to let time stomp all over our deductions, and if it tries, it will find that I'm not one it wants to mess with."

"This just in: my brother is going to get in a fist fight with time," Chrysalis snorted, letting out a laugh. Everyone else joined in on it, and I found myself doing the same. I shook my head as she kept speaking. "Anyways, what are you going to do? Are you just going to explain to the court what you think happened?"

"We don't really have any other options, so I guess we have to," I remarked, shrugging. "If we can get a bit of evidence in our favor, they'll have no choice but to believe us. We can offer an explanation when nobody else can, and that's what I think matters most where this case is concerned."

"Speaking of explanations, I just realized something," Deirdre piped in. "It's about Cormous and this case. Well, more specifically, it has to do with Cormous' murder. I didn't think about it this way until now, but it makes a lot more sense now that I view it using this lens. Mr. Morix, tell me, how did Prosecutor Burke discover the crime scene?"

I paused placing one hand on my chin as I thought. "Well, she was investigating the disappearance of the victim, and this key popped up. The key happened to be found on Cormous' body," I said, realizing halfway through what I was saying. "She discovered it on Cormous' corpse after he had been killed. He had the key all along, locking anyone working at the agency out of the room since they didn't have the key. We didn't know why he had the key, but we thought it was because he had come into contact with the culprit at one point."

"He hadn't contacted the culprit at all. In truth, the culprit was the one who had the key all along. We didn't think about it that way since we didn't have any evidence to show that he was at the scene of the crime, but when you connect the dots in this way, everything makes sense," Deirdre concluded, a small smirk on her face. "The key was pointing us to the killer all this time, even if the culprit was dead and buried. How peculiar."

"If you ask me, that's going to be our perfect clue. After all, if we have this evidence in the trial, we can show that Cormous was involved with the case. It was mentioned before now, sure, but we can say now that he was involved with the murder of the victim. That's what we need. Before, we were worried about there not being any evidence, but this is the proof that we need," Lily grinned. "Write that down in your notes."

I grabbed a pencil off a nearby table and began to scribble this down on the third page, the first blank one on the notepad. I finished writing it down a few seconds later, and I slid the pencil in the spiral of the pad. "Perfect. I didn't think of that, though we really haven't had long since hearing the truth to consider something like that," I remarked. "Thank you for pointing that out, Deirdre."

"It seems like we figured out a lot together. We really do make for a great team," Yuri smiled. She clapped her hands together in excitement. "Could any other law agency pull something like this off?"

"I mean, maybe, but most law offices in this area are corrupted," Chrysalis said, her voice even despite the serious topic she was discussing. "The legal system as a whole has been tainted with poisonous people, but at least we've managed to escape such issues. That's one huge perk of staying away from large agencies where employment is concerned."

"Look at us, the best law agency in the immediate area. I'm willing to take that as a win," Lily laughed. "Then again, can we really judge that when we're part of the agency that we have declared to be the best? Perhaps we're a little bit biased."

"To hell with bias. I don't care about biases when it's true looking at basic facts. After all, look at all the other companies that are corrupted by their own power. This is simply a fact," Chrysalis told her. Her determination would not be shaken, and I must admit, I was surprised by how firm she was remaining. She could be stubborn at times, but I didn't expect her to be so open about it when Victoria was around.

This isn't me saying that Chrysalis has an issue with Victoria. In fact, there really aren't any problems between them. In truth, there was only one thing that kept them from getting closer, and while it was a large factor, it was nothing that would break their relationship on arrival. The Oracle project was the primary issue on the matter, and she still didn't loathe Victoria for not being privy to the secret information that fueled our law agency. Victoria was going to find out at one point or another, and Chrysalis seemed to have plans to explain the truth to her at some point. It was just a matter of time.

Chrysalis had held off on telling Victoria the truth due to the problems with Cormous. After all, since he had been a traitor, fear of betrayal was higher than ever. Victoria was brought into the agency because we thought that she could help us with lessening the corruption of the legal world. If we didn't think she was capable of helping us out, she wouldn't have been brought in. Telling her the truth was the plan even from the very beginning. All we had to do was figure out a proper time to do so, and that was much harder than it seemed from a first look.

"Well, now that we've figured this out, I think that we should go and get some food," Victoria remarked. "I know for sure that I'm getting hungry. I don't know how much more of this I'll be able to take. I love investigating, but I'm not quite as much of a fan of it when it gets between me and eating. Self-care is important and all that."

"In that case, let's go and find something to eat. I'm getting hungry too, and when I get hungry, I resort to eating everything in the agency's fridge," Yuri laughed. "With that said, maybe we could go and get some burgers. We could either plan for the trial tomorrow or talk about something else completely. I don't think I would care either way. Let's go on and get there though before we figure out what we're going to talk about. Does that sound like a plan?"

If anybody had problems with Yuri's suggestion, they didn't say anything about it. Everyone started to go over to the elevator, and I watched as Yuri, Deirdre, Lily, and Victoria walked in first. "I'll be down there in a second," I told them. They disappeared into the small room before going down after the doors shut.

Chrysalis got to her feet and stretched her arms up over her head. "Thank you so much for taking Victoria with you. I definitely needed to use my influence as Oracle to get a hold of some of the information that led us to these conclusions, and I really didn't want to have to tell her the truth about my work today. That would cause far more issues than it would be worth," she told me. "The others all get it, but Victoria doesn't exactly know what I'm capable of."

"I would have made sure that she was out of your hair no matter what, regardless of who was actually on the case," I assured her. I rustled her hair using one hand, and she let out a small laugh at the action.

"Either way, I'm thankful for it. Now, we should go after the others. We don't want them waiting for us too long," Chrysalis told me. She gestured for me to follow her as she pushed the button for the elevator, letting out a small yawn while we were waiting.

When the elevator appeared, we stepped inside. I was glad that we had learned so much, but it was finally time to rest after quite possibly the most intense day of investigation in all my time as a lawyer.


Plot twists? Yes

-Digital