It was going to be a good day, Phoenix Wright blearily thought as he woke up in the warm afterglow of a dream about sex and doughnuts. The wet spot on his pajama bottoms had yet to cool and there was only a tiny speck of drool on his pillow. Excellent: all of the benefits, few of the drawbacks. He stretched, rolled out of bed, and rinsed off his boxers before throwing them in the hamper.

"Lookin' good," he told himself as he stopped in front of his mirror, naked and flexing. All of the takeout food from his recent cases wasn't showing up anywhere around his midsection. With a wink and a grin at the mirror, Phoenix shot a pair of fingerguns at it and climbed into the shower.

I wonder where we'll get our next case? he mused as he scrubbed. His lips pursed thoughtfully in the steam. Phoenix was still glad he'd taken the Rhodes case, even if he'd felt vaguely dirty by ten minutes into their first meeting at the detention center. He'd promised their sister that he'd protect her brothers and Lucy had been very convincing when she came to him in tears. She'd seemed ten years younger and infinitely more innocent when she wrung that promise out of him. She'd reminded him of Maya, of Ema. ...I might have a weak spot for desperate little sisters.

The right verdicts needed to be handed down to the right people. Jude Rhodes was a vile, dangerous man, but he'd been accused of slicing up people he'd never been near. Phoenix wasn't necessarily happy about keeping him safe, but keeping the state on its toes for accuracy was a good thing for future defendants. And it wasn't like Jude's life was going to be very much fun for the foreseeable future.

Still, standing up for those guys and keeping one of them alive hadn't made him many friends. The newspapers had been all over this case, and he'd been named more than once as the attorney fighting for Public Enemies One and Two. Ugh. What if only serious bad guys looking for legal loopholes sought him out, now? He'd taken this case to make it easier for real innocents, but who knew if they'd even want to come near him?

As soon as the worry built, it ebbed back into his pleasant sex-and-doughnuts haze. He probably wasn't popular among a lot of people, but now even more accused who thought their cases were helpless would be aware of his name. Yeah. Any publicity was good publicity.

Why, maybe he'd go in to the office and see two dozen calls waiting in his voicemail, and every last person would be wrongly arrested. He smiled into the streaming water. Yeah. That was totally how this would work out. Everyone else might hate him, but this case would be like catnip to the people he really wanted to defend.

Phoenix cranked off the shower. Time to get to work. He dried and styled his hair while whistling a jaunty tune, then picked out a shirt and suit that had been ironed somewhat recently. As he tugged his tie into place, his gaze fell back on the rumpled bed he'd recently left, and he pictured Edgeworth making it with perfect hospital corners.

What? Phoenix laughed. Oh, right. He and Maya had actually invited Miles Edgeworth to stay over with him. Wasn't that crazy? What on earth had compelled them to...

Memories returned like an avalanche, and Phoenix froze. Someone was going to kill him. I wanted him here because someone was going to try to kill him, and... shit, shit, shit! I totally forgot! What if Lucy had tried to kill him right after he skipped their meeting? What if Edgeworth was already hurt or missing... or worse?

He looked around wildly for his phone, but it was nowhere to be seen. Shit! Phoenix darted for the living room. There was his cell where he'd left it on the coffee table, and he moved to scoop it up, fingertips itching to dial.

His back exploded into pain as something struck it, hard.

Phoenix tried to cry out, but nothing in his body wanted to work: not muscles, not lungs, not brain. He barely managed to get one arm up to shield himself as he collapsed through the glass of his coffee table.

"Mr. Wright," said a familiar voice. Phoenix's blood pooled below him in a slow, warm ooze. It hurt to move. He hurt. All of him hurt. A foot rolled him roughly over, and Phoenix whimpered as glass dug into his back.

Lucy Rhodes smiled down at him. A metal pipe dropped from her hand and landed heavy on the carpet. Even now, she looked far more innocent than her brothers: younger than her twenty-three years, with big blue eyes and skin that freckled instead of tanned. Her dark hair hung in schoolgirl ringlets, looking out of place against a canvas camouflage coat. "Good morning," she sing-songed. "Did I wake you?"

Phoenix let out a noise that he meant to be a scream, but nothing worked right, still, and it came out as a gurgle. If his neighbors hadn't heard the breaking table, they wouldn't have heard that. I actually ironed this shirt, he thought numbly, and now I'm bleeding all over it. That's not fair.

"You're probably wondering why I'm here," Lucy said as she knelt, picked up a shard of glass, and casually twisted it into Phoenix's palm. He cried out at the fire running along his nerves, but she covered his mouth until the bloody tip of the glass hit carpet. "Well," she continued conversationally as he wept, "I have a score to settle."

Edgeworth, Phoenix thought, tears streaming, and was startled when she nodded. He'd moved his mouth against her hand, he realized a second later. She'd figured out the name from that.

"I knew I couldn't get to him directly," Lucy said as she dug for something in her coat's pocket. Phoenix tried to bolt from under her smaller body as she did, but he was still clumsy from the strike to his back and her knee sank onto his mangled hand so smoothly that she must have planned it. He collapsed onto crunching glass. His world was nothing but that agony in his palm as her knee ground down.

A syringe, Phoenix thought as he stared up at her with pain-glazed eyes. Shallow, quick breaths barely filled his lungs. That's what she'd been looking for: a syringe.

"And like I told Mr. Edgeworth," Lucy continued as she flicked out any air bubbles in the syringe and lifted Phoenix's other arm for injection, "he would be living to regret his decision." A smile slid into place as she shot oblivion into his veins. "You... probably won't."

Phoenix tried to stay awake, he fought and clawed against the blackness seeping into his head, but it was no good. His last thought was to scream for everyone he cared about to run away from this lunatic, but his body was numb and nothing worked right.

Lucy kept smiling down at him as his eyes slid closed. His blood had splashed on her face. It looked like the crime scene photos.