After that case at the gymnastics competition, I wound up being approached by none other than Venus. She wanted to know how it was that Chrysalis and I met Sora given how she didn't even realize we had another sibling. I was more than happy to tell her the story regardless of how pretty it ended. After all... I didn't know it at the time, but this would soon become some of the most important knowledge that I would ever have access to, and it was going to change everything.

~ Three Years Prior to GC-9 ~

April 11

District Courthouse

11:00 AM

Cotoli Morix

I let out a sigh as I walked out of the courtroom, glancing down at where Chrysalis was beside me. She was staring ahead simply, her ponytail swinging in her wake as she walked. I nudged her gently with my elbow. "You didn't have to come with me, you know."

Chrysalis just shrugged. "I guess not, but it intrigued me, I suppose," she commented simply. "I didn't think that the first trial you were going to wind up watching was going to be a murder case."

I nodded with a light hum. I had to agree with her on that. I had recently started taking law classes at a local university, and that meant learning the ins and outs of the legal world. The first step was to start watching trials as they happened, and when I heard about this one, I suppose I just had to get involved with it.

The reason why... Admittedly, it's somewhat complicated. It was a murder case involving an international music star by the name of May Lin. She was found dead in the living room of her home, and her daughter was a witness to the crime. She testified before the court and claimed that the defendant was the one responsible for the murder. Unfortunately, the prosecution hadn't been given enough evidence to find the truth in full. The prosecutor, a woman by the name of Tora Yin, had been left flicking wildly through the various items on the prosecution bench in an attempt to find something crucial, but she ultimately came up short. She claimed that the piece of evidence was stolen and that she didn't know where it had gone. It was on this somewhat sour note that the defendant was declared not guilty, but I could tell by the expression on the defense attorney's face that he didn't agree with this verdict in the slightest.

Though I suppose that doesn't mean all that much in terms of explaining why it was that this case intrigued me so much, huh? Well, it involved my father. Chrysalis and I only had a father in common, having turned out as half-siblings as a result. Our father had always been a rather defensive man, but there was one thing that I did find out about him one time by pure chance. He had muttered something under his breath relating to this May Lin woman while he was looking at a photo of her. I discovered that he was staring at a photo of May Lin along with her daughter (who had turned into the witness to her murder) that had been released to the public. It was something that caught my attention given how little my father usually yielded when it came to the time period between his relationship with my mother and his eventual marriage with Chrysalis' mother. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, but when I learned that May Lin had been murdered, I just had to know the truth.

And so, I found myself standing in the courthouse's lobby alongside my younger sister. She had wanted to tag along for some reason or another, though I could assume why that was. Chrysalis had practically refused to leave my side over the course of the past few months as long as she was given the chance to be with me. She and I had always been close, but I knew that there was something else at play here. Of course, that's not something that I'm at liberty to disclose, so I'll leave it as her story to tell whenever she's ready.

Chrysalis suddenly stopped me, holding up one hand. I snapped out of my curious daze as I glanced around the room to see what it was that had caused her to shift her demeanor in such a sudden way. She pointed ahead of us, and I could see that there was a person curled up on a couch on the opposite side of the room.

It didn't take long for me to figure out who it was that was sitting there. The turquoise hair truly was distinctive. The victim's hair had been the same color, something that was made perfectly clear by the photo of her body splayed out on the floor of her home that the prosecution had presented. On top of that, I would have been a fool to not recognize the witness who had testified in the trial that Chrysalis and I had just left behind. Her name was Sora Lin, if I recalled correctly.

Chrysalis stood there silently for a moment, waiting for me to offer her advice on what we were meant to do next. We met eyes from there, and I nodded in the direction of Sora. From there, we crossed to the other side of the room, and I carefully examined the crying girl. I was about to take a seat beside her, but I ultimately decided against it, not wanting to overstep any boundaries given the fragile emotional state she was in.

"Hey there," I greeted carefully, keeping my words as soft as possible while still making sure that I was heard. The last thing that I wanted to do was startle her, after all.

Sora remained still as could be for another long moment before she started to glance up in my direction. She sniffled lightly, raising one hand to rub at her face with her knuckles. "Who are you...?" she asked.

"My name is Cotoli Morix, and this is my younger sister, Chrysalis," I explained. "We... We were in the gallery of the trial that you testified in."

"Oh," Sora said shortly, still not willing to meet either one of our gazes. Instead, she pressed her head back between her knees. "I know that he did it... I don't understand what could have happened for him to be declared innocent."

"The murder weapon went missing, didn't it?" Chrysalis asked. She was met with a wince from Sora, prompting the younger girl to go back and rephrase her inquiry. "The weapon that was used in the crime... It was stolen according to the prosecution."

"It must have been," Sora murmured. "It was a kitchen knife... I would recognize it anywhere, especially since it... It..." A new wave of tears washed over her, and her shoulders trembled from the sob that pushed itself free of her lips. "I saw him do it! I watched as he killed her, but that's still not enough!"

I looked down at the ground sadly. Unfortunately, it didn't seem as if anything was ever enough when it came to finding the truth behind cases like this. It was a dark and dreary thing for me to think about, but I was all too aware of how hard it could be to achieve justice. The same concept that had been paraded as something pure and perfect throughout one's childhood could be very easily distorted and twisted into something almost unrecognizable, and here, it had ultimately fallen short and failed those who needed it most.

"Do you think that there's something that can be done to fix this?" Chrysalis questioned of me, her young eyes overwhelming with compassion for Sora. Even though she was only twelve years old, she had too much empathy for her own good.

I hesitated at those words. I still didn't understand as much about the law as I probably could have, and that meant that there were still quite a few questions that I wouldn't be able to answer. Unfortunately, this was one of them, so all I could do was shake my head. "I don't know," I confessed. The last thing I wanted to do was give either one of them false hope and then have to tear it away from them when something else proved itself to be the truth. I wanted to help, not to build up something impossible.

"I want something to be done about this," Chrysalis muttered. "Maybe we could go and talk to the defense attorney and prosecutor for this case... Assuming that they want to talk to anybody right now, that is."

I nodded. That seemed like as good an idea as any, and it was the only lead that we seemed to have in terms of fixing this. I glanced down to Sora from there, addressing her with as much care as I could possibly cram into my voice. "We're going to speak with the others involved with the case about this, alright?" I questioned of her carefully.

Sora was quiet for a long moment, and I could tell that she was trying to figure out what our intentions could have possibly been. After she managed to break through her quiet, she allowed her legs to slide back to their normal positions on the couch instead of being pressed against her torso. "Okay," she murmured. "I... I want to come with you."

"Are you sure?" I asked, immediately overwhelmed with something anxious. I didn't want her to push herself too far in the name of something like this, and if I could do something to keep her calmed down otherwise, I would do it, no questions asked.

Sora nodded. "I want the truth to be found too... And that isn't going to happen unless I can do something to step up and help," she said softly. I could tell that she was trying to keep herself occupied so that she didn't have to face the full extent of her own grief. If she was distracted and doing something productive, then she wouldn't have any time to think. It was hardly the best way to counter negative emotions, but I would have been lying if I said that I hadn't engaged in such behaviors at some point in the past.

"How about we split up to try and find them then?" Chrysalis prompted. "We need to catch them before they're ready to leave, after all, and we'll be able to cover more ground if we split up."

Sora nodded without missing a beat, and she dashed off amidst sniffles and tears to find our targets in question. Chrysalis watched her go before letting out a heavy sigh. "I feel bad for her," she confessed softly. "The culprit was right there in the courtroom, and yet, there was nothing that could be done to change this."

I nodded my understanding. "There's something going on behind the scenes of this case... I can just feel it," I murmured. It was clear as could be as far as I was concerned. There was someone who had taken the evidence from the prosecution. I had heard people talking about Prosecutor Tora Yin before the trial started, and they claimed that if anyone was thorough enough to not wind up caught up in any unfortunate circumstances, it was her. She had been facing off against Defense Attorney Jay Yang for ages up to this point, and the two of them worked together like magic when it came to finding the truth behind a given case. It didn't seem right to imagine that Prosecutor Yin would just lose the most important piece of evidence at hand. There must have been something going on that we weren't seeing, and it was up to us to figure it out.

Chrysalis started to walk in the opposite direction from where Sora had gone, still refusing to part with me even in the midst of a situation where we would be best split up. I couldn't blame her; why would she want to leave me when she was paranoid about being alone? This was hardly a place for her to wander by herself to begin with, so deep down, I was glad that we were going to be able to search for our targets as a duo.

"You know... You never told me about why you wanted to check out this trial in particular," she muttered. "I found it a little odd how eager you were to jump out and see this case in court. Is there something going on that made you want this so badly?"

That was a difficult question to answer, but I knew just as well as she did that this conversation wasn't going to end until Chrysalis had heard the response that she was looking for. That was exactly why I didn't bother to hold back the truth when it came to explaining the fact of the matter. "As a matter of fact... Yes. There was something that happened with our father a long time ago, and... I think that he might have known the victim in this case," I explained to her.

Chrysalis' eyes went wide. "I didn't expect that... I've always heard that the victim was a nice person. That's what people in the music industry had to say about her, at the very least," she said. The unspoken contrast to that asked why a woman so kind would associate with a man so sour, but Chrysalis didn't bring the words into existence.

"Father was looking at a picture of her that appeared in a magazine at one point," I continued to say. "You know him; he isn't the type to be interested in celebrities or gossip, but this... He was most certainly intrigued by the fact that she was in a photo with her daughter. He didn't realize that she had a child, I suppose, and he was shocked by it."

"And you're wondering why it was that our emotionless piece of crap father responded in the way that he did," Chrysalis concluded with a small nod. "That makes sense. In that case, I suppose that this is our best way of finding answers. We can't ask the woman herself anymore... I don't think that would have been possible to begin with, truth be told. She was an internationally famous singer, so it would have been difficult to get a hold of her, much less actually hold a conversation with her."

I nodded my agreement. I had only come to this trial because I was curious about our father's past behavior, and I certainly hadn't expected all of this. In a way, I guess that one could say that I felt an obligation to find the truth for the sake of the woman that had made our father act so strangely. Her murder was officially unsolved as it stood with the defendant having been declared not guilty, so I was just going to have to find the truth on my own. It was a personal matter, but that wasn't a bad thing in the slightest, and I was going to follow this through to the end one way or another regardless of what got in my way.

Chrysalis and I had been walking around the courthouse for quite a few minutes before the younger girl at my side let out a sigh and glanced up at me. "I hope that Sora's had more luck with finding the defense attorney and prosecutor than we have. We haven't seen anyone that could help us to find them either."

I sighed and nodded. "You're right... Perhaps we should go to the other side of the courthouse and see what it is that we might be able to find over there," I suggested.

Chrysalis opened her mouth to respond, but she was ultimately cut off by someone walking into the room in a hurry. I glanced up and realized that it was a bailiff, and he stood firmly in front of the door. All of the people in the area continued going about their regular business until the man cleared his throat to attract everyone's attention. "Everyone! The courthouse is officially on lockdown!" he declared. "No trials that are currently in session will be disturbed, but nobody is allowed to leave the premises until after an issue has been resolved!"

There was a collective groan of upset from the others in the area, and I glanced down to Chrysalis. She knew just as well as I did that this couldn't have meant anything good, and so, we both began to walk closer to the man that had made the announcement. "Excuse me," I began to say. "If you don't mind my asking, why is it that nobody is allowed to leave right now? Did something happen?"

The bailiff nodded his confirmation. "Something did happen. On the other side of the courtroom, a defense attorney and prosecutor were attacked in one of the defendant lobbies. They are currently being looked after by paramedics, but the culprit remains at large," he explained.

Chrysalis and I immediately looked over to one another, reading the other's thoughts without a beat of hesitation. "You don't think that..." Chrysalis began to say softly, her eyes wide as could be.

"We weren't able to find the defense attorney or prosecutor involved with the last case," I told her simply, knowing that did everything that was necessary to fill in the gaps regarding our next step. "We have to go and investigate it."

"Civilians aren't allowed to go anywhere near the immediate area of the crime," the bailiff cut in. "If you don't have a reason to enter the area, then you won't be able to get in."

I frowned at those words. I didn't exactly have a good way to get around something like that, truth be told. "We..." I attempted to come up with an excuse, but nothing that I thought of really seemed to make an explanation come to mind. I had no idea how we were going to be getting around this man, and given the fact that this was our first step if we wanted to investigate, that was far from being a good thing.

"We were looking for the victims before they were attacked," Chrysalis cut in for me as she looked up the bailiff solemnly. "We need to speak with them as soon as possible."

"They're unconscious right now," the bailiff explained. "The suspect is a young woman who stumbled upon the scene and was arrested soon after seeing them. Nobody else seems to have entered the area at the time of the crime."

"This girl... Would she just so happen to go by the name of Sora Lin?" I asked, something nasty and upset starting to well up in my stomach. I didn't want this to be the case, but I already knew better than to let my own optimism get the best of me when it was so clear what was taking place.

"Yes, as a matter of fact," the bailiff replied. "Do you know her?"

"We're friends of hers," Chrysalis responded before I had the chance to say anything. "He's studying to become a lawyer as well. Perhaps we could be of some use regarding the case. After all, we did see the suspect a short while before she was arrested."

The bailiff hesitated for a long moment before he nodded. "In that case, you may go," he said. He stepped aside to give me and Chrysalis the chance to duck out of the room, and I took this opportunity by the horns and dashed out of the area before he could change his mind.

"Good job back there," I told Chrysalis with a small smile. "I was a bit worried that we weren't going to be able to head out and see Sora again, but you were fast enough that we were able to make it seem like we knew what we were doing."

"You're going to get more confident with bluffing and lying one of these days," Chrysalis snorted. "It seems like that's what lawyers do in court a lot of the time." I attempted to come up with a rebuttal to that snide comment, but in the end, I only wound up coming up short, so I simply smiled and shook my head as we continued to weave our way through the courthouse.

It was easy enough for us to get by the other bailiffs that asked us who we were by using the excuse that we had already provided to the first man that we crossed paths with, and from there, we were able to reach the vicinity of the scene of the crime. The door was cordoned off with yellow police tape, but I could still see quite a bit in terms of what could be found within the confines of the room.

There was tape spread out on the floor to outline the places where the victims had been roughly. There were two large pools of blood on the ground, quickly infesting the carpeted floor with an ugly crimson color. I winced at the sight, pretending that it wasn't as nauseating as it was. I was glad that the two victims of this case (most likely Jay Yang and Tora Yin) had managed to survive, but I still felt awful that they had gone through something like this to begin with. No person deserved to be attacked in such a way as far as I was concerned.

"Excuse me. Might I ask what you two are doing here?"

I turned to face the sound of a voice that was coming from off to my right. The man who had spoken was on the taller side, though he still wasn't able to reach my full height. His hair was dark, and he had a green hat perched simply on the top of his head. He seemed to be friendly enough, and as far as I could tell, he was an investigator of some kind. I couldn't think of any other explanation given that he wasn't dressed anything like the bailiffs or police officers in the area.

"We're connected with the suspect of this case," I explained. "We're her friends. My name is Cotoli Morix, and this is my younger sister, Chrysalis."

The man smiled gently in our direction, but I could tell that there was something strained around the edges of his grin. "My name is Toby Erikson. It's nice to meet you both," he greeted kindly. "I don't think that you should stick around in this area for too much longer though. After all, this is the scene of two attempted murders."

"Who were the victims?" I asked, but something inside of me was already sure that I knew the answer.

"Tora Yin and Jay Yang," Detective Erikson replied with a shake of his head. "They were both found in the defendant's lobby soaked in blood. It seems as if they were both stabbed, but we don't have any proper explanations regarding what took place. There was no murder weapon, and the medics are still attempting to learn what they can while trying to save their lives."

"Do you think that they're going to make it?" Chrysalis questioned, her voice already edging on something fearful.

Detective Erikson hesitated before he offered a half-hearted shrug. "At this point, it's really too early to say. There's a lot that seemingly took place at the time of this attack. There was likely one common culprit, but I have one question above all others... How was a knife smuggled into the courthouse to begin with? It truly doesn't make any sense."

"No... It really doesn't make sense," I agreed with a small shake of my head. Even if the weapon responsible for the attack wasn't a knife, one would have expected that something dangerous enough to do this much damage wouldn't have had a chance of getting into the courthouse to begin with. I didn't like the idea of the culprit having figured out a way to get something so dangerous into the building, and it was certainly something that was going to have to be figured out over the course of the investigation.

"You said that you're friends with the suspect, yes?" Detective Erikson questioned. He was met with a nod from both of us. It wasn't entirely true, but it wasn't exactly false either, so I decided that it would be best to go along with it for now. "She was found in the entryway to the room, and she screamed upon seeing the two victims on the ground. A police officer that had been involved with another case wound up arresting her on the spot, saying that she was likely the one responsible. She's been taken away for a temporary session of questioning since then."

"How did you manage to get here so quickly?" Chrysalis asked. "After all, the crime seems to have only taken place a few short minutes ago, so it wouldn't really make sense for you to have managed to come here from some outside location so quickly."

"I was already in the courthouse," Detective Erikson replied. "I was testifying as part of a trial that got out of session not long ago... To be more specific, it was a murder case."

Realization clicked into my mind, and I gasped as I glanced up at him. "You were the detective for the trial about May Lin's death," I concluded. I had neglected to recognize him because of the haze my mind had descended to in the aftermath of hearing that an attack had taken place, but the longer that I looked at him, the more confident I was. He had been there during the trial, and he had testified about the details of the investigation as well.

"That's right," Detective Erikson nodded. "The victims of this case were the defense attorney and prosecutor for that trial as well. Right now, the general consensus among the people who have come to investigate already is that the victims could have been attacked as an act of revenge on the matter of that very trial."

"What are you talking about?" Chrysalis asked with a light frown on her face.

"The suspect of this case insisted that the defendant was the guilty party, but he wound up getting off with a not guilty verdict when the clinching piece of evidence went missing. There are some involved with the investigation who think that she attacked the defense attorney to get revenge on him, and the prosecutor just so happened to walk in at the time. And so, she lashed out at her to silence a witness," Detective Erikson explained before he paused for a moment. "Of course, that's all only a theory, so there isn't much in terms of evidence that could prove this to be the truth."

"The defendant of the May Lin murder case... Where's he right now?" Chrysalis questioned next. "If everyone else involved with this case was also tied up in that trial, then you have to wonder where he went off to."

Detective Erikson shrugged. "I'm not exactly sure, but I don't think that he would have been able to leave the courthouse behind in such a short period of time," he confessed. "Everything happened within forty-five minutes of the end of the trial, and the defense attorney and prosecutor seemed to have wanted to speak with him before he left. Of course, we aren't sure where he is now, but the building has been locked down already, so hopefully it won't be too much longer before we find him and ask him about what happened."

"And you suspect Sora because she was the one to discover the scene, yes?" I prompted. I was met with a nod from Detective Erikson in response. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think that's possible. We were with her for a short period of time before the crime took place, and I somehow doubt that she could have been responsible for something so gruesome in such a short span of time."

Detective Erikson's eyes went wide. "We didn't know that she had at least something like an alibi... Alright. I want you two to stay with me as we start our investigation into the rest of this case. I believe that there are a few details that you could help me to clarify given the circumstances. The suspect is too distraught to say much of anything to us. Perhaps you'll be able to help her to open up by talking to her. You did say that you two were connected, after all," he said.

"Alright," Chrysalis agreed without missing a beat. I had to admit that I was a bit concerned about the idea that our lie about knowing Sora well was going to wind up being exposed, but for the time being, it was the only thing that was allowing us to investigate the case. In other words, this was going to be our best bet in terms of learning just what happened regarding the attack of the very people that we had been searching for.

"Stay close to me," Detective Erikson instructed. He started to walk away from the door that had been blocked off by police tape, and I was given one final glance at the bloodied carpets before I was out of range. I didn't know where this case was going to lead us or what we were even looking for, but for the time being, investigating appeared to be our best plan. Anxiety twisted in my stomach, and I was left to wonder just what in the world wound up happening in the time after we were separated from Sora. Then again, there was only one way to figure that out, and we were just going to have to see where this path led us from here.

I'm so stressed but nobody needs to know that

-Digital