"You have two choices here. You could either give me what I want... Or you could not."

"You can't expect me to just hand it over to you. What sort of man do you think I am?"

"I had been hoping that you would have at least a shred of self-preservation... So be it."

"Y-You can't just-"

"I think I can do whatever I want... Now, if you don't mind, I'll be taking what I came for."

"N-No... S-Stop..."

"'What sort of man do I think you are?' A fool. Goodbye."

July 27

Morix Law Offices

11:00 AM

Pieter Fury

I tapped one foot against the floor below as I polished at Ikari, the gentle cloth practically melting against the hardened steel. When I was finished with each major swipe, I held up the blade to get a better look at it. Each time, I seemed to find some new smudge that I hadn't seemed to notice before, and that prompted me to poor a bit more cleaning fluid on the cloth before I got back to dragging the cloth across the blade. It was a simple, monotonous process, but it at least kept me busy, and that was what mattered most to me.

For the most part, it had been a rather normal day at the offices. Nothing of note had really happened, and we had all been practically silent since settling down in the main area of the agency. Today, the only people in the common area were Sky and Lily. Felicity had been here earlier, but she had wound up leaving early on account of not feeling good. I still didn't know what that was about, but Felicity hadn't been acting like herself in ages. There always seemed to be something else on her mind that stopped her from acting the way she should have. I was worried about her, but since I didn't know how to breach the subject, I instead decided to leave things where they were for better or worse. Only time would be able to say for sure if I had made the right decision or not.

I hadn't been expecting much of today, truth be told. We had seen a significant case just a few weeks ago, and even if it hadn't ended in us appearing in court, it was still important. In the aftermath of her arrest, Jane Doe managed to escape and vanish into the wind. She hadn't seemed all that happy about it as it was happening according to what minimal witness testimony we had, but she still faded into the night when someone came to find her. Nobody could say for sure who had been responsible for it, but as far as I was concerned, the truth was obvious as could be. There was only one strong option for what it could have been in my mind.

If Jane Doe was an Emsthorpe, which all of us were certain she was, then that meant the person who had helped her to escape was also no doubt an Emsthorpe. I had no idea what it meant that they were being so active all of a sudden, but I didn't like it. Even back when the Emsthorpe family had committed a lot of crimes, it was never quite this consistent or constant. The last time there had been this many crimes over the course of just a few months, it was after their first major killing spree years upon years ago. So much had changed since then, but it seemed they were still just as much of a problem as ever. They had just adapted in the ways that they handled their criminal activity.

I hadn't realized my thoughts were drifting until after I heard the cloth shriek as it streaked down the surface of my blade. I winced at the sound, recognizing it as a sign that I had been pushing down too hard with the cleaner. I held up the sword, but I was relieved to see there were no smudges left. Perhaps my autopilot had been good for something after all.

The shame was that I didn't even know what I was supposed to do now that I was done with that. There wasn't exactly much that I needed to take care of at this point, especially since we were currently on a hiatus from all things Oracle. Cotoli had demanded it, and everybody else had just fallen in line eventually. Even Chrysalis, who had wanted to keep pursuing the assassins that had resurfaced as of late, allowed her activities to slow and eventually stop. Nobody had heard anything from Oracle since the case at Ashbrook, though the details to the rest of the world were scarce. As the news wondered just how they were meant to learn more about our mystery spy when they had seemingly vanished, the people of Morix Law Offices wondered when the Emsthorpes would be caught so that we could go back to the way things had been before.

The ring of a phone broke through the quiet, and I looked up as I slid Ikari back into its sheath. Lily was the first one to get to her feet, and she dashed over to the phone before picking it up. Normally, we had someone downstairs to take phone calls, but apparently, things had changed since I had left years ago. Venus had once been the person to work reception, but since her passing, we had pulled a spare phone up to the common area just to make sure that we were able to catch people as they were calling us. It was certainly convenient, to say the least.

"Morix Law Offices here," Lily began. Her eyes went wide as the person on the other end began to speak. "You're... Okay." There was a long pause as the caller on the other side explained the situation at hand, and I could tell it was something serious by the way Lily's expression continually grew darker. She slowly nodded to herself before reaching for a notepad and starting to write something down. "Alright... Wait. I know that name. He's the...?" Another pause. "I understand. I suppose we'll be seeing each other down at the scene of the crime." Pause again. "Good luck. I'll talk to you later." With that, Lily hung up the phone and looked down to her notepad, scribbling down a few spare notes after she had read everything she had already written.

Sky and I looked to each other before he found the courage to speak. "What was that about?" he asked slowly. "Was that a request for a case?"

"As a matter of fact, it was," Lily replied. "It came from one Prosecutor Amy Kalles." She paused for effect, and I tried to hide the way my eyes shot open. And here I had been assuming that all Oracle activities had drawn to a halt under Cotoli's command. It seemed that Chrysalis had wound up with other plans for better or worse, and so, here we were.

Sky, on the other hand, didn't seem to recognize the name at all. I suppose he wouldn't have known it since Chrysalis hadn't seen much of a reason to use her aliases since he and Felicity had joined the agency. The Oracle project had a lot of history, and sitting down to explain it to everyone was a long affair, and it seemed as if nobody had gotten around to talking to Sky about it yet. I couldn't have really been too shocked given the strange time at which he had joined the agency, but I also knew that we were going to have to choose our words carefully to not cause too many problems over this case. I didn't want to stress him out too much by forcing him to keep a secret like that under pressure, especially when he was already such a nervous person. He had enough to think about with Felicity's odd behavior as of late, so perhaps it would have been for the best to just not breathe a word of this to him, at least not yet. We would get to the right moment to discuss it one of these days, I was sure.

"I see," I told Lily slowly. "What did she tell you?"

"A murder took place in a place called Gather Law," Lily began. "It's an information gathering company. Apparently, the people who run it do everything they can to get their hands on the latest and greatest information within the legal system. Well, somebody there was killed, and the defendant is... Well, I don't know if I would be able to call him an old friend of the agency necessarily, but he's certainly someone I know of from a long time ago."

"Who would that be?" Sky questioned with a small tilt of his head. "Would Pieter or I know anything about him?"

Lily shook her head. "Probably not. He was... He was involved with a murder case that took place at Interpol," she began to say. "We learned after the fact that he was involved with helping to rescue those who had been taken hostage by the ones behind the crime. We haven't spoken directly necessarily, but I do know of him from what I've heard about him from others."

My eyes widened as I processed everything she was saying. I knew exactly what she was talking about when she discussed the case that had caused her to meet this defendant of ours. Occisor had killed someone at Interpol before taking a variety of hostages as a way to get away with their crimes. Among their hostages was someone they suspected to be Oracle, and they had been right about it. Hearing about it had absolutely terrified me, and I still didn't know how to keep my composure the longer I thought about it.

Still, if this defendant for this case had been involved with the rescue effort to extract the hostages from the hands of Occisor, then he was a friend of mine. Anyone who had played a part in stopping Occisor once and for all was certainly on my side, and I wasn't going to even begin to entertain otherwise ideas. I wanted to do everything I could to help this unknown suspect, and I could tell the other two knew it just as well as I did.

"Well, I suppose we can meet him down at the detention center before we do anything else," Sky suggested. "It wouldn't hurt for us to become a bit more acquainted with the situation at hand, and he would probably be the best person to tell us everything."

I nodded my agreement as I started toward the door. "Let's get to it then."

July 27

Prosecutor's Office

11:15 AM

Niamh Wood

I couldn't seem to contain my nerves no matter how hard I tried. I felt like something in the pit of my stomach was rattling around with enough force and speed to shatter glass from across the room. I still couldn't believe what had happened that morning. Prosecutor Amy Kalles, a higher-ranking prosecutor within the office, had asked to speak with me. I had no idea if it was something good or bad since she hadn't been given the chance to explain, but she still wanted something from me. The waiting was killing me, and it felt like my stomach was being eaten from the inside out by some sort of parasite. She wouldn't want anything too awful from me, right?

Right?

I sat outside her office on a nearby bench, my hands pressed firmly against my knees. I couldn't seem to calm my nervous energy no matter how hard I tried. Realistically, I knew it couldn't have been too bad. I mean, she was just another person, right? She wouldn't just ask me to meet with her and then say something terrible to me, right? I had known her vaguely for a while, and I had always wanted to get to know her better, so maybe this had something to do with that.

It was a bit hard to get close to Prosecutor Kalles of all people. She didn't work in the Prosecutor's Office all that often, instead seeming to have many smaller projects outside of the office that kept her away a strong majority of the time. I had no idea what specifically kept her away, but I didn't want to get too deep into it either. It would be an invasion of her privacy, and if I tried to ask her about it, I would just feel weird. You know, even weirder than I did just waiting for her office door to open so she could tell me what in the world was going on.

When the door finally did slide open, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. Fear raced through my body hot and terrified, and I looked up to her with wide eyes. I probably looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but I couldn't bring myself to calm down, instead just smiling nervous and forced up at her. "H-Hello!" I exclaimed, my voice too loud and shaky for my own good. I wished the ground would swallow me whole, and I hated that the universe was instead deciding there would be no mercies of the earth today.

Prosecutor Kalles smiled to me, her eyes kind as could be. If she noticed that I was nervous, then she didn't let it show, instead simply watching me gently. "Good morning, Prosecutor Wood," she greeted. "I'm glad to see you decided to come."

"Of course!" I replied, trying my best to stay soft but enthusiastic. My heart continued to scream in my chest, and I thanked everything holy that people couldn't naturally smell fear. I paused for a heavy moment, swallowing dryly and nervously. "U-Um... Why is it you asked to see me?"

"I received a report of a case this morning," Prosecutor Kalles began. "A murder took place at an important business' headquarters near here. Someone was arrested on suspicion of the crime as well. I was hoping that perhaps you would be willing to join me on the prosecution for the case."

My eyes went wide, and for a moment, all I could do was stand there and stare at her slack-jawed. I had worked myself up so much only for her to just... Ask me if I could join her on a case? Was that the only reason she had asked me to come to see her? All of a sudden, my anxiety felt absolutely ridiculous.

But taking on a case could still be a bit of a nerve-wracking experience. I had never worked with her before, and I still couldn't fathom why she would be interested in me getting involved with this at all. I had no idea what to think of this, and in the blink of an eye, my anxiety both subsided and came back full force. I knew I looked ridiculous for doing nothing but staring, but I couldn't bring myself to do much else.

"What do you think?" Prosecutor Kalles asked, eternally patient and gentle. "It wouldn't only be the two of us on the case, I assure you. Prosecutor Lin has already agreed to join me, and she's finalizing our preparations to head to the scene of the crime now."

I finally snapped out of my trance, and words came tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. "Y-Yes! I would be happy to come along!" I cried out. I bit my lip when I realized just how loud I had been. At least I agreed with the words that had come out of my mouth before I could get a grip on myself. That was one note of me not embarrassing myself as much as I could have.

"I'm glad to hear it," Prosecutor Kalles smiled, just as gracious as I had always seen her through our limited interactions. Her kindness toward me was certainly a breath of fresh air, and I rather liked the idea of being able to work with her on a case. She seemed patient and caring, and given just how much of a disaster I could be when it came to cases like this... Yeah, it was certainly appreciated.

Prosecutor Kalles pulled out her phone a moment later, and I stared at the case in an attempt to pin down where I had seen it before. Something about the silvery casing felt familiar, but it was difficult to say for sure where I had seen it from specifically. "Ah, Prosecutor Lin should be here soon. Afterward, we can se out for the crime scene," she told me. "Thank you for agreeing to help us with this case. I appreciate it a lot."

"Y-Yeah, no problem," I answered, wishing I had a bit more to say than just that. Still, Prosecutor Kalles seemed to understand, and she simply smiled gently to me. This was the sort of caring guidance and kind conversation I had been looking for over the course of the last few months. Between the rise of the Emsthorpe family and being arrested for murder, I had been in desperate search of a break, and it looked like I was finally going to get it. Well, taking on a case wasn't necessarily a break, but it was a distraction from my regular life, and that was everything I needed then and there, if I was being honest. Everything looked like it was working out.

We would just have to see how the case went and decide from there how things unfolded.

July 27

Detention Center

11:40 AM

Lily Shield

The three of us stood awkwardly in the detention center for what felt like an eternity before the door opened to reveal a young man with dark blonde hair on the other side of the glass. He was rigid, almost as if he was afraid of being locked up there in the first place. He glanced around carefully, something in his eyes strangely terrified. I had seen agent X of Interpol a few times in passing since he spent a lot of time with Neptune Mercure, but this was a different situation entirely.

"S-So... You're the ones who have come to defend me?" X asked slowly. "I suppose that makes sense... Neptune trusts you a lot, so if she was going to have anyone take on a case like this, it would be all of you."

"Would you mind telling us your name?" Sky questioned with an awkward smile. "F-For those of us who are unaware of your identity, that is." He couldn't seem to move past his anxiety no matter how hard he tried, so he instead shifted uneasily on the spot while no doubt wanting to smack himself for just how ridiculous he felt he sounded.

"My name is Buddy Bradshaw," the young man replied. He looked over to me specifically before sighing. "You probably met me as Interpol agent X, but that's not... That's not the reason I'm here. I'm here because I'm Buddy Bradshaw behind all of that."

"Would you mind telling us a few details about the crime?" I asked as I eased myself into a chair on the visiting side of the glass. "I'm afraid we're entirely unaware of everything that's happened up to this point." I gave him a smile of my own even though I knew it wasn't going to help his anxiety much, assuming it helped at all."

"Well... I live with the family that runs an important company near here," Buddy began to explain. "Gather Law is a corporation dedicated to the collection of information, and I've been living with them as an unofficial secretary for a few years now. Ever since then, I've been helping them out with their work. In more recent times, I've been helping them alongside two others. You already know Neptune pretty well though, huh? She comes by quite a bit."

I nodded. "Yeah... And then the two of you hang out with that other girl too," I concluded. "Clarith, I believe her name is."

"That's right," Buddy confirmed. "The three of us work for the company in... Well, our own special ways. It's a bit of a complicated situation. The point is that we've been living in the family's mansion for a few years now, and we do what we can to help out the company when we have the chance to do so. That was why I was arrested for this crime to begin with."

"Who exactly was killed?" Pieter asked. "We didn't hear much of the victim before coming here either."

"I don't know who it was specifically, but it was one of the workers at the company. I think it was one of the people who worked in the filing department to put information where it was meant to be stored," Buddy explained. "You'll have to ask around at the scene of the crime if you want to hear his name. I wouldn't be able to tell you now even if I wanted to, and I promise you that I do want to."

"This Gather Law place... What can you tell us about it?" Sky interjected. "I've heard a thing or two about it in the past, but nothing overly specific... It's a company that gathers information for the sake of the legal system, right?"

"Something along those lines. The owner of the company helps to keep a bunch of important information in the legal system backed up," Buddy went on. "A lot of people like him, and he has a massive catalogue of case information from the course of the last fifty years and even a few cases that go before that. If there's something to know about in the legal system, he probably already knows about it and has the information filed away somewhere. That's just the way he runs everything."

I glanced over to Pieter, trying to gauge if he was just as nervous as I was. He had done his best to hide it, instead forcing the tension in his shoulders to dissipate before it could grow too mighty or frustrating. We were all thinking of the same thing: did Gather Law know the truth about Oracle? It was perhaps a long shot if they only collected information specifically related to the cases they investigated, but it was still a concern. No wonder Chrysalis had gone undercover as part of the prosecution to take on this case. She was trying to see what they had on her from her own angle without being suspected. It was certainly an interesting way to go about things, especially in a time when Mr. Morix had firmly said that no work would be done about Oracle until after the Emsthorpe assassins were taken care of, but it was just like Chrysalis to want to do something like this. When she put her mind to something, she finished it one way or another. That was how we had wound up with the Oracle project in the first place.

"What else can you tell us about the crime?" Sky asked hesitantly, desperate to move right along from the subject at hand. "Why are you being suspected? Do you have a motive for what happened?"

Buddy hesitated. "I... I don't entirely know what happened," he admitted. "If I do work at Gather Law for a day-which is pretty rare since a lot of my time is eaten up by Interpol nowadays-I tend to help with organization work in the archives wing of the business building. I act as the main secretary there when Neptune needs a day off or has to do other work. That's what she takes care of most of the time now that I have other things to focus on." He paused before sighing. "I'm getting distracted. The short version is that I'm not entirely sure what happened since I was... Well... I was unconscious for quite a bit of it."

"You were... Unconscious?" I echoed. Of all the answers I had expected to hear from him, that was probably one of the last. "What happened for you to be unconscious at the time of the crime?"

"Neptune had to step out to take a phone call, so she asked that I take her place in the secretary position for a short while. I thought I heard somebody shuffling around nearby, so I went to investigate. That was when I... I don't entirely know what happened, but I think somebody. might have drugged me. Everything went black, and I must have been out for a while. I have no idea what happened over the course of the time when I was unconscious. If I did, I probably wouldn't be suspected for murder now," Buddy sighed with a shake of his head.

"Something must have happened when you woke up then to seal the deal," Pieter concluded. "The fact that you didn't have an alibi probably didn't help much in terms of making it seem like you weren't the culprit. People love to jump to conclusions for cases like these, I've found."

"I was unconscious for quite a while, and I was locked up in a cabinet or something while I was out," Buddy went on with a frown. "When I was able to wake up again, I pushed my way out, though I just about collapsed again once I was out. I could smell blood nearby, and... I wasn't thinking. I followed my nose and wound up deeper in the evidence rooms. That was when I saw him... The victim. He had been stabbed at least a dozen times over, and I couldn't even figure out who he was at first. I was frozen to the spot as I tried to grab my phone to call for help, and that was when Neptune and Clarith showed up to see what all the fuss was about. Neptune had come back from her phone call, and she wanted to know what was going on. Well... I feel like you can figure out the rest."

"You were arrested since you didn't have an alibi," Sky finished for him, and Buddy nodded. "What about the reason you were suspected? Did the police just decide that you being there when others found the crime scene was enough of a reason to think that you were the culprit? I imagine the lack of an alibi didn't really help your case much either..."

"The motive for the murder is... Well, I'm not entirely sure of it myself, but the police seem to think that I was defending some unknown secret," Buddy murmured. "If I'm hiding something, then I don't know about it either, but... The police are confident that there's something I'm not telling them about all of this. They think I killed him to hide some truth, but I don't know what they're talking about. I don't have a secret that I would kill someone over. Even if there was something I didn't want to talk about, I feel like I would have come up with another solution aside from just... Murder."

"Unfortunately, the environment in which you were working that day wound up turning against you just long enough for you to become a suspect," Pieter concluded, and Buddy nodded once again. "Well, that's not definitive enough proof of you being the criminal, and we're going to do all we can to show that in the courtroom. Assuming you're willing to have us as your defense team, that is."

"I would love to have you defend me," Buddy smiled wearily. "I don't think I could thank you enough... I'm going to have to thank Neptune for telling you to come and help me too. I assume that's the reason that you're here."

Now things were starting to make a bit more sense. Chrysalis hadn't just randomly decided to take on this case out of the blue. She had no doubt heard about it from Neptune before deciding to hide out as part of the prosecution, and from there, she passed the message along to us to make sure that we were willing to play along for the sake of finding the truth too. Neptune would have gone to Chrysalis above all others, and from there, Chrysalis would have asked the rest of us to chip in so that we could protect the integrity of the Oracle secret while we were there.

In fact, Chrysalis had probably opted to hide just to make sure that nobody would recognize her even if they knew that she had something to do with Oracle. It was a long shot and a paranoia-inducing thought, but it was still concerning for all of us. I could only hope our fears were proven to be false in the end.

"Yeah... It is," I told Buddy even though something told me that he wasn't entirely convinced I was telling the truth. Good for him; I was lying through my teeth for the sake of Oracle, but he didn't need to know that. Even if he was already aware of the truth behind the project, it was a risk I wasn't about to take in a public space like this.

"Before you go, I want to ask that you go and speak with the family that runs Gather Law," Buddy said next. "There are four of them, and I'm sure at least one of them is going to ask how I'm doing. They may be able to hare some valuable information with you, so you should try to talk to them when you get the chance."

"I suppose that settles what we're doing first then," I concluded. I rose to my feet and reached for my chair before pushing it back up against the nearby wall to complete the row of seats found there. "Thanks again for talking to us. We'll be sure to defend you when the trial comes around. Everything is going to be fine. We'll make sure of it no matter what happens in the courtroom. Promise."

Buddy offered us a weary smile as we started toward the door. "Yeah... I hope so."

new case baby!

-Digital