June 7
District Courthouse
Courtroom No. 5
1:45 PM
Apollo Justice
"The defense believes that it has sufficient evidence to consider this trial finished here and now," I announced. My heart skipped a beat at the bluff, but I couldn't stop now. This was the best chance we were going to have to finish everything. If Detective Ponce had erased just about every piece of evidence that could have pointed to him being the culprit, then we were just going to have to go at this from a different angle, and luckily, I had the perfect idea for where to start. I could only hope the bluff actually worked the way I had been hoping it would.
"You... What?" Judge Courtney asked, her expression twisting with confusion. "We don't have the proof we're looking for in order to prove the witness is the guilty party. What makes you so sure that we can end the trial here and now?"
"We have the murder motive we've been searching for all this time," I replied with a smirk. "All this time, we've been wondering what exactly could have acted as a connection between the victim and witness, but I think the truth is finally starting to come together. We know the witness' secret."
"You can't say things like that and not elaborate on it," Detective Ponce frowned. "What secret do you know?"
"You might not want to admit the truth, but we've essentially determined conclusively at this point that you're Hugo Osborne," I replied. "That secret is damning and deadly. You haven't confessed to anything, but everyone in this courtroom understands that you had something to do with the death of May Lin. Even if the evidence is gone, the logic behind it remains, and every single person sitting here today is aware of what this means."
"What are you getting at?" Detective Ponce asked, his eyes narrowing as his lips curled into a snarl.
"Every person here knows that you're guilty of the murder of May Lin. There are enough connections between you and Hugo Osborne for everyone to be suspicious of it. We said earlier in the trial that Hugo Osborne must have been the one who killed her even if he never admitted to it before his disappearance," Athena chimed in as she caught on in full to what I was trying to do. "And all of that means that you would have had a reason to murder the victim of this case."
"You mean to say that the secret would have been a reason to silence Oracle," Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth realized. "That's the reason the victim was killed."
"But Reva Nyde wasn't Oracle. We've figured this out," Detective Ponce countered. "What makes you so sure that I was the one who murdered her if she wasn't Oracle?"
"The fact that the victim isn't truly Oracle isn't what matters," Mr. Wright said. "What matters most right now is your perception of the situation. You thought the victim was Oracle, and that perception would have been enough to spur you into murder... Even if it wasn't the actual Oracle that you killed."
"You were desperate to keep the secret of your actions safe. You were convinced that the investigation the victim was carrying out was going to reveal the truth behind your actions, and you decided to murder her to ensure that everything stayed under wraps," I continued with a small smirk. "Everything all came crashing down on top of you though. Even without any conclusive proof, we all know what really happened that day, and there's nothing you can do to run from the fact of the matter. We won't let you run from it."
"Even if we have no conclusive proof of what you did, the truth is obvious. You're Hugo Osborne, and you killed May Lin for the sake of keeping everything hidden regarding your work as an evidence forger. You faked your own death to get away from the accusations that had come to hang over your name after the trial, and you tried to frame the biggest threat to your plans for the crime," Mr. Wright said. "At the same time, you killed Detective Ponce and had his body disposed of so that you could take his place. You've been hiding under his name ever since then."
"You then got involved with the GC-9 Incident, killing the victim because you thought she was a threat to the truth of your past," Athena went on. "Now, you're trying to kill two birds with one stone. You're trying to frame the biggest thorn in your side for murder once again, and you thought that you killed Oracle. Even if she wasn't Oracle, it doesn't matter at all."
"But that-" Detective Ponce began.
Athena held up a hand to silence him. "Is the same logic you used to say that Prosecutor Lin was the one behind the crime here," she finished. "You said that it didn't matter or not if Detective Nyde was actually Oracle as long as the defendant suspected that this was the case. Under your logic, the actual identity of Oracle didn't matter at all. The most important part of this entire affair was what the defendant thought the truth was. I see no reason that the truth of that couldn't also apply to you. If you were sure that Reva Nyde was on the verge of revealing your true identity to the world, then you would have wanted her dead, and that's why all of this happened."
"But you didn't see the fatal flaw in your reasoning and worrying that Detective Nyde was Oracle," Mr. Wright smirked. "You didn't realize that she would have never exposed her own father for his past crimes of forgery. She admired him more than anything, and their senses of justice lined up with one another perfectly. She didn't have a reason to reveal the truth behind his actions at all. If you had realized that, then none of this would have happened since you wouldn't have believed that the victim was behind the Oracle project."
"I think this is a perfect chance for us to explain everything that has happened from the start," I announced as I glanced up to Judge Courtney. "What do you say, Your Honor? Do you think it's time for the truth to come out from beginning to end?"
Judge Courtney nodded. "You make a compelling argument, defense. I'd like to see where this takes you," she agreed.
"You can't mean to just go along with all of this," Detective Ponce muttered, his jaw dropping and his eyes going wide. "You have no idea what it is they're trying to get you involved with. This is all some massive farce for the sake of smearing my name through the mud."
"If it was a smear campaign, then I'm sure they could have found other ways to ruin your reputation without accusing you of being a murderer from years ago," Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth told him with a shake of his head. "The prosecution would like to hear the defense's logic as well. Tell the court everything you think we need to know about this case."
I nodded, though I could already tell this was going to take a while to explain. Detective Ponce had dragged us all through hell and brought many people down with him along the way, but all of that was going to end here and now. He still didn't see the end of this bluff and where it was going to take us, but he would realize soon enough that there was no escape. He had been trapped since the start of the trial, and the jaws had only clamped shut on him the instant we realized that he was Hugo Osborne in disguise. It was only a matter of time before the trap finally shed blood, and I couldn't wait to see it.
"Let's start things from the very beginning then... With the history of Hugo Osborne," Athena announced. "As has recently come to our attention, he was an evidence forger. He generally kept to himself but had a reputation for being incredibly talented at his craft. He was the master of back alley deals, and even if people were suspicious of him, they couldn't ever find the tangible evidence needed to prove his involvement with these dealings."
"The first exception to that rule was May Lin as far as we can tell," I continued. "She likely witnessed one of his deals, and that was what led to her death. Hugo followed her home and killed her, not realizing there was a witness to the crime: May's young daughter, Sora."
"When the trial went into session, Sora's testimony was ignored because of evidence forgery on the part of the defense attorney, Connolly Sutton. He had a perfect record in the courtroom, and he was desperate to maintain it," Mr. Wright went on. "This outside interference led to the truth being cast aside and ignored in favor of the false idea of Hugo's innocence. He was able to escape the courtroom without being convicted... But the near brush with conviction tanked his reputation enough to that point that he couldn't do his work anymore. Or, at the very least, that's the theory we've stumbled into throughout our investigations of this case."
"Meanwhile, the young witness whose testimony had been ignored continued to investigate the case on her own. Sora Lin refused to give up on the death of her mother since she knew the truth, and she was going to make it known one way or another," Athena chimed in. "She told her new guardian and caretaker about her recent investigations into the crime. Said caretaker was Natasha Morix, her older brother's mother. Out of a desire to help her new daughter figure, Natasha decided to start investigating the truth of the matter as well."
"But that was when it all came crumbling for Hugo," I said next. "He could see that he was being investigated, and when that was combined with his failing reputation, he saw only one option. He faked his own death, instead killing a detective by the name of Gordon Ponce so that he could assume his life after the fact. He abandoned his victim's body somewhere and underwent plastic surgery for the sake of matching up with his victim in appearance... But his eyes remained the same as ever before, just waiting to be discovered."
"The crime went unsolved because of an apparent lack of evidence, but the seeds had already been planted as part of a much larger ploy," Mr. Wright continued. "Even though the culprit was never found, there was evidence left behind to make it seem as if the culprit was none other than Sora Lin. The suspicion was that she had killed the one who had murdered her mother since the justice system didn't take care of him on its own. It may not have been the outcome the culprit was searching for-an outcome that got rid of her entirely-but it was still a step in the right direction and began to damage her reputation."
"Since the body wasn't found at the scene of the crime and there were instead only bloodstains left in the area, the culprit had to resort to other methods to make sure the crime appeared to have been committed," Athena told Detective Ponce. "Hugo Osborne's ID was left near the pool of blood so that everyone who found it would assume that it had been dropped in the struggle. If he went missing, then everyone would connect the dots enough to believe that he was the victim and had been killed with his ID being left behind along the way."
"A single knife was left behind there as well to act as the supposed murder weapon, but as long as the body of the true victim-Gordon Ponce-was not in the area, everything was in order. The body of the real victim would have ruined everything, so it was removed in favor of a vacant pool of blood left behind in an alleyway," I declared. "But that isn't where the story ends. The killer escaped and took on the identity of his victim..."
"Creating none other than the new Gordon Ponce," Mr. Wright finished for me. "You declared the victim of that case-widely believed to be Hugo Osborne-dead for the sake of covering your own tracks. Still, the attempt at framing the witness of the past crime fell short, and she wasn't tried or convicted in a courtroom. Instead, it was simply left behind as an unsolved case that nobody would ever truly understand... Until today, that is."
"Prosecutor Lin continued to investigate the case with everything she had, earning that position so that she could find the truth behind her mother's murder. Noticing that she was still searching for the truth, you decided to erase every piece of evidence you possibly could for the sake of keeping the truth hidden. If she found too much, your plans would have fallen apart on the spot, and you couldn't let that happen, so you used your position as a detective to burn away every piece of information that had ever existed about Hugo Osborne," Athena said, a smirk spreading across her features. "You just didn't know that those efforts were going to get noticed along the way."
"Prosecutor Lin realized what was happening and mentioned it in passing to her guardian," I went on. "She knew that somebody had to be erasing the past for the sake of keeping everything hidden, and Natasha Morix decided to do what she could to help her find the truth behind May Lin's death. In doing so, she pulled out every newspaper headline she could find about the case... And along the way, she found a photograph of Hugo Osborne, the sole picture to survive the erasure of the past."
"She never had the chance to share the picture with Prosecutor Lin though. Before the opportunity presented itself, she was murdered in Sparx Factory in what would come to be known as the GC-9 Incident. Nobody realized that she had been searching the truth so extensively, leaving the photograph as a forgotten secret in a box at the bottom of a storage unit when all was said and done," Athena continued. "The culprit knew that she was searching for the truth at least to some degree though, and that was why she had to be silenced. The motive for murder back then was all in the name of keeping the truth of the past buried for as long as possible."
"Along with the murder, the killer took advantage of the opportunity to grab a few important pieces of technology from the factory she worked at. One of those pieces of evidence was a remote that could be used for different hacking endeavors, the perfect thing to use to erase evidence of the past," Mr. Wright said next. "That was probably how so much information about Hugo Osborne was buried so completely. That device made the process simpler in a way only a technological genius would be able to understand... A technological genius just like Hugo Osborne."
"A trial for her death had to be held though, and that was where the problems began to get worse," Athena frowned with a shake of her head. "A man by the name of Darken Russell was arrested for the crime even though there was testimony that plainly stated he was innocent. A witness knew he wasn't the culprit and said as much in court to try and clear his name. Still, the trial went ahead, and after a struggle full of corruption and forged evidence, the truth was silenced when he was declared guilty. The prosecutor of the case, Huber Turner, went on to watch as Darken Russell was executed for a crime he never committed, all because of Turner's desire for a perfect win record."
"The forged evidence and the false execution ultimately brought about the greatest change to our legal system's history in recent memory: the creation of the Oracle of the Law," I smirked. "That was the case that started it all, and the Oracle was desperate to uncover the truth behind the one who had killed Natasha Morix. Oracle began to lay the pressure on hot and thick for the sake of figuring out what had really happened, and everyone began to scramble to figure out how to find out more about them, especially as they began to rise through the news' attention over the course of the last two years."
"You were one of many people trying to figure out more about Oracle, but you were far from being the only one," Mr. Wright went on. "One such person trying to uncover the truth behind Oracle was Aloist Lenard, the defense attorney from the GC-9 Incident. He had ignored the testimony of the witness claiming his client was innocent in favor of relying on forged evidence, and Oracle was closing in on him. He started to search more, and a journalist hoping to expose Oracle for their part in ruining his own life snuck into Lenard's office and killed him to get their hands on the research. That all fell through, but the important part came after the trial ended when the prosecutor of the case-Huber Turner-was finally exposed for his crimes."
"He forged the autopsy report so that the time of death was changed. He wanted to find the defendant guilty of murder to uphold his perfect win streak, and the forgery of the autopsy report was the way to do it... Though it also wound up shooting him in the foot," Athena explained. "Oracle was aware of the case behind Lenard's death, and they used that forged autopsy report to expose him to the media as an evidence forger and corrupt prosecutor. He lost everything, including his job, and eventually... His life."
"The sister of Darken Russell, Darcie Russell, caught up with him and killed him for the sake of getting revenge on him for everything he did to have her brother executed. That only caused the attention around Oracle to skyrocket as more people began to wonder just who could have been behind it all. The sudden spike in attention caught the attention of Fleur Haynes, an Interpol agent desperate to uncover the truth," I chimed in. "She was hoping to investigate Oracle on her own time, and using her position as an Interpol agent, she had much of the evidence involved with the cases that could have involved Oracle transported elsewhere."
"This leads us to the evidence transfer that took place on the train," Mr. Wright went on. "Fleur Haynes was investigating Oracle, and in order to get their hands on her research, you decided that she had to die. You hired Lara Burgess, an assassin, to infiltrate the train and steal the evidence before taking it back to you. In the midst of the investigation, you took the remainder of the evidence and used it to put together a picture of who you thought the criminal was. You didn't realize just how wrong you were at the time though, and everything began to come together in your mind... And you were convinced that Reva Nyde was the one behind it all."
"Soon after the train murder, another stir reached the legal system, and it came in the form of the murder of Douglas Reid," Athena continued. "He was the one who had forged evidence back in the SR-3 trial so that the defense attorney, Connolly Sutton, could maintain his own win record. Reid tried to blackmail Sutton with his knowledge of the evidence forgeries, all since Oracle was pursuing the truth and closing in fast and steady. The two got into an argument about it, and Sutton responded with murder. He was found guilty soon afterward, but that trial was the final nail in the coffin in your mind to prove the truth of the matter."
"You were sure that Reva Nyde was the one behind Oracle, and you decided to follow her to the truth no matter what it meant," I continued. "You knew she was going to Hawk Park that day, and you set up the defendant to make it seem as if the two were planning on meeting. You didn't realize that Reva was planning on speaking with somebody else entirely... Someone who would go on to become the greatest nail in your coffin and the sign that pointed us in the right direction here today."
"You had been planning to follow the victim to the park with intentions of killing her and ending the Oracle's grasp on your past once and for all, but you didn't realize just how much else was going to need to go into that. You didn't realize that she had already been planning on meeting with someone else," Mr. Wright frowned with a shake of his head. "Before you arrived, Reva got into an argument with someone else, a witness we would later come to know as Chrysalis Starr. Chrysalis was attacked with a knife and wound up throwing herself into the nearby river to escape her assailant, leaving behind few traces of her presence."
"You arrived at the scene of the crime from there and shot Reva Nyde before setting up the crime scene to make it seem as if she had spoken with the defendant about the recent cases. You thought you could use the stolen evidence as proof that the two had argued about the truth behind Oracle before the victim was killed. Along the way, you found the small knife that had been used in the attack on the assault victim, but you disposed of it so that nobody would be able to point to the truth. You didn't even know what it meant at the time, but you replaced it with the weapon from PN-6 regardless to try and draw parallels to the murder of Hugo Osborne and place more suspicion on the defendant," Athena pressed on.
"As soon as the defendant arrived, you had her arrested as the criminal, thinking that you had executed the perfect murder," I told him. "But you didn't realize that the person you had thought was Oracle was far from being the victim. You had no idea that she was related to one of the other people Oracle had exposed, something that would have proven that she wasn't involved. As such, you wrongly came to believe that she had been Oracle all along, a silent watcher over the cases that would come to be chains around your neck and your conscience."
"You were desperate to get rid of Oracle, so you jumped to conclusions and decided to murder her that day," Mr. Wright went on. "But the evidence has still been left behind to show that you were wrong about it all. Reva Nyde was not Oracle, though you are only just now seeing this."
"You still don't have any evidence!" Detective Ponce roared, his face contorted with rage. "You can say all you want that I was the one behind this, but you don't have any proof that I was involved with it! Unless you can come up with that, you can't do anything to say that I was behind it!"
"We might not have any evidence, but we've already shown our train of logic. The fact of the matter is that us not having evidence doesn't matter," Mr. Wright smirked. "We've already made our arguments perfectly clear and dealt a fine blow to your reputation... Something that will come back to bite you."
"The fact of the matter is that you've failed," I pointed out with a small smile of my own. "You thought Reva Nyde was Oracle, but you didn't realize just how wrong that was. Oracle is still out there, and if you ask me, it's just a matter of time before they figure out what has happened here today. In fact, I suspect that Oracle is watching us right now in some way or another, perhaps through their other potential informants or simply because they're here in the courtroom."
"Even if we don't have the evidence to show that you were the one behind the murder, Oracle knows the truth, and it doesn't matter what you say from here. Let's say for a moment that you're able to get away because of a lack of conclusive evidence. Oracle will still find a way to tear you to shreds. You might have erased a lot of the proof of the past, but there will always be some scraps left behind, and Oracle is going to uncover them one way or another," Athena chimed in. "There's no escape for you, and there hasn't been since the case began."
"You failed, Gordon Ponce... No. Hugo Osborne," Mr. Wright announced. He slammed his hands against the defense bench, unable to hold back his glare at the one and only mastermind. "That failure is going to tear your life to shreds here and now. Oracle will find you the same way they have found every other criminal who caused the past to degrade to tragedy. This is only the beginning. You failed to capture your quarry, and now, they will come back to ruin everything you have ever sought... You have failed, and you will pay for it at the hands of the one you vowed to destroy! It all ends here and now!"
Hugo Osborne seethed at us for a few heavy moments, the weight of the world finally crumbling onto his shoulders, before he let out a mighty scream that pierced the air of the courtroom loud enough to make us feel as if we were shaking. His fingers came up to his cheeks as she slashed downward mercilessly, opening cuts along his skin that looked like tracks of tears falling down his face. The red trails continued to streak toward the ground, dropping almost like rain to the courtroom floor as his screams echoed into the air. It wasn't until he ran out of breath that he finally fell silent, slumping forward against the witness stand with his lower arms braced against the top of the podium.
The courtroom fell silent for a few heavy moments before Judge Courtney finally spoke up. "Do you admit to your crimes, Hugo Osborne?" she questioned carefully.
"I admit to nothing," Osborne snarled as he looked up to the rest of the courtroom. His glare was sharp and horrible, only made worse by the blood streaking down the sides of his face. "You have no evidence."
"You don't need to admit to anything. We already know the truth, and so does the Oracle of the Law," Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth said with a stiff shake of his head. "Everything will come out with time, and there won't be anything you can do about it."
Osborne remained silence for another tense moments before shaking his head. "Alright," he whispered, his voice heavy as can be. "May Lin, Gordon Ponce, Natasha Morix, Reva Nyde... I killed them all. I've done everything you've stated."
A bailiff walked into the courtroom as if on cue before walking over to Judge Courtney. "Your Honor! Here's the evidence you requested!" he exclaimed before handing her what looked like a small photograph.
Judge Courtney examined it for a few moments before nodding to herself. She turned it around and gave the rest of the court the chance to see. It was a picture of Gordon Ponce-the real Gordon Ponce-and the difference between them was noticeable. The photo was old, from before his murder years ago, but it was still clear that the man in the picture would not have grown up to become the man standing on the witness stand before us now. This was a different man entirely, and everyone could see it.
The bailiff moved forward to escort Osborne away, and the guilty party looked up at the rest of the courtroom with a glare in his eyes. "Curse you, Oracle... Damn you for everything..." he muttered just as the doors to the courtroom closed behind him.
The room remained silent as Prosecutor Lin made her way up to the witness stand, a light smile on her face and a weight lifted from her shoulders. Judge Courtney returned the favor as she reached for her gavel. "I believe it's finally time for the verdict to be declared," she announced. "This has been a long time coming."
Prosecutor Lin nodded, her eyes watery but relieved all the same. "Yes... It certainly has," she agreed.
Judge Courtney smiled as she raised her gavel high. "This court hereby finds the defendant, Sora Lin, not guilty." The courtroom exploded into cheers right on cue, and before I could fully process what was happening, I felt Trucy's body slam into mine as she threw her arms around me. I grinned down at her before returning the embrace. I couldn't believe it was finally over. After all the bitter fighting we had endured to reach this point, the trial had been finished. It didn't even feel real.
I looked over to Mr. Wright and Athena and saw that they were smiling as well. Even Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth was smiling to himself even though he didn't show it quite so openly. The air in the courtroom was electric, and every member of the gallery seemed to understand what this meant as well. At long last, we were free.
Judge Courtney waited for the cheering to finally die down before she spoke once again. "Court is adjourned!" she announced as she hit the gavel down. With that simple sound, the clamoring of the gallery sparked up all over again, and I continued to look around with a smile on my face and Trucy's arms still wrapped around my body. At long last, everything was over. We had won the case, and in doing so, we had sealed away the truth of the past as well. It didn't even feel real, but I knew it was.
Finally, the truth of Oracle's machinations could be left to rest. Finally, we had brought peace to the pain of the past.
Whew! And there goes the final part of the trial! That was a long one!
I have to say that I get happier with this story as a whole the closer we get to the end of it. There's not much remaining at this point-just the post-trial stuff and the epilogue-but... Wow. I really am in love with this story. I'm happy I decided to follow through with it even though I wasn't entirely sure about it in the beginning. It turned out amazing.
This final case is officially the longest case I've written for Ace Attorney fic to date. The longest Morix cases are all 20 chapters, but this one is going to hit either 24 or 25 depending on how long the post-trial stuff takes. I really love how it all turned out though. Just... Agh. I don't think I can say it enough.
I don't have all that much to say right now as we get closer to the end of it all, but I really hope you guys enjoyed this final confrontation. I wrote it the way I did for a few reasons that will be mentioned in the post-trial stuff, and I hope it was a satisfying conclusion to everything we've seen up to this point. It was tons of fun for me to write, and I pray you all feel the same way about reading it. I really do love this story to bits.
Next week, we'll wrap up all we've seen so far with the post-trial conversations. Until then, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feedback is appreciated as always. Have a nice day, everyone!
-Digital
