Title: Cell Block Tango
Rating: T
Characters: Ensemble
Spoilers: Spoilers for Spirit of Justice; also for the original trilogy and Investigations.
Time: Post Case 4 of Spirit of Justice
Author's Note 1: Decided to try something different: a song parody! I'd like to think I'm pretty good at these. Anyway, I love the frenetic energy of "Cell Block Tango" and I thought: the murderesses of Ace Attorney are pretty unapologetic about offing their victims. Especially the ones who claim their victims pushed them too far. So I thought they'd be perfect to sing a rendition.
And yeah, I know Dahlia is dead by the time of Spirit of Justice, but I didn't really care too much about it. She's too psychotic not to include in this little collection of some of Ace Attorney's murderesses.
[Geiru]
Crush
[Mimi]
Sleep
[Dee]
Squish
[Maggey]
Uh uh
[Dahlia]
Cecil
[Callisto]
Mack Rell!
[Gant/Emcee]
And now, the six merry murderesses
Of the LA County Jail are proud to present
Their rendition of:
The Cell Block Tango!
[Geiru]
Crush
[Mimi]
Sleep
[Dee]
Squish
[Maggey]
Uh uh
[Dahlia]
Cecil
[Callisto]
Mack Rell!
[All]
He had it coming,
He had it coming,
He only had himself to blame
If you had been there,
If you had seen it,
[Dahlia]
I bet you would have done the same!
[Geiru]
Crush
[Mimi]
Sleep
[Dee]
Squish
[Maggey]
Uh uh
[Dahlia]
Cecil
[Callisto]
Mack Rell!
[Geiru]
You know how some bosses play favorites,
And really get you down?
Like Taifu.
Taifu liked to dis me
No, not dis; crush!
He promoted my junior ahead of me,
And I'm just so devastated,
And I'm looking for a little bit of sympathy
And there's Taifu, sitting on his tatami,
Mixing udon and dissing me
No, not dissing.
Crushing!
So I said to him, I said, "You give me my title right now!"
He didn't.
So I took the udon dough from the bowl
And I kneaded it perfectly...into his face!
[All]
He had it coming,
He had it coming,
He only had himself to blame
If you had been there,
If you had heard it,
I bet you would have done the same!
[Mimi]
I met Turner Gray at Gray Clinic about ten years ago,
And he told me the shifts were single
And I aced that job interview,
So we started working together
He'd operate, I'd medicate
And then I found out
One shift, he told me? One shift, my ass!
Not only did I pull a triple, oh no.
He made me fall asleep at the wheel,
So exhausted, you know?
So the day of the seance,
I fixed him some medicine, as usual.
You know, some guys just can't hold their blood in
[Geiru, Mimi, Dee, Callisto]
He had it coming,
He had it coming,
He took a worker in her prime
And then he used it,
And he abused it,
It was a murder, but not a crime!
[Dahlia, Maggey]
Crush, Sleep, Squish, Uh uh, Cecil, Mack Rell!
[Dee]
So I'm sitting in my director's chair,
Writing up some new scripts for TV,
Minding my own business
In storms my actor Hammer in a righteous rage,
"You've been screwing me over!"
He says. He was crazy!
And he kept on screaming,
"You've been screwing me over!"
Then he ran into the fence spike.
He ran into the fence spike ten times.
[All]
If you had been there,
If you had seen it,
I bet you would have done the same
[Maggey]
How did I find myself here again?
They said I injected my husband, Bjorn Toulouse,
With poison using his insulin needle
I don't know why the courts said this,
I tried to explain it at the station, but they wouldn't listen
[Dee]
Yeah, but did you do it?
[Maggey]
Uh uh! Not guilty!
[Dahlia]
My twin sister Iris and I loved yoga
And we'd practice for hours
After my stepsister died,
We were up to twenty positions in a row
One, two, three, four, five!
Head-stands, lotus, side planks,
One right after the other!
Well, this one day in April
Iris and my man Feenie were at the Hotel Cecil,
Chatting, having a few laughs
I needed to get back my necklace,
So I had asked Iris to get it
I got there to pick it up,
And there's Feenie and Iris
Doing number seventeen,
The spread eagle!
Well, I was in such a state of shock
I completely blacked out, I can't remember a thing,
It wasn't until later, when I was washing the ash from my hands,
I even knew Doug was dead!
[Others]
They had it coming!
[Dahlia]
They had it coming
[Others]
They had it coming!
[Dahlia]
They had it coming all along
[Others]
They had it coming all along
[Dahlia]
I didn't do it!
[Others]
She didn't do it!
[Dahlia]
But if I done it
[Others]
But if she done it!
[Dahlia]
How could you tell me that I was wrong?
They had it coming!
[Others]
They had it coming!
[Dahlia]
They had it coming!
[Others]
They had it coming!
[Dahlia]
They had it coming all along!
[Others]
They took a worker in her prime
[Dahlia]
I didn't do it!
[Others]
And they used it
[Dahlia]
But if I done it
[Others]
And they abused it!
[Dahlia]
How could you tell me that I was wrong?!
[Others]
A murder, but not a crime!
[Callisto]
I liked Byrne Faraday more than I could possibly say
He was an idealistic guy, sensitive, good father
But he was always trying to find my boss
He'd work himself ragged looking for my boss
And on the way,
He found Mack Rell, Ernest Amano, and Manny Coachen
I guess you could say we broke up because of creative differences
He saw himself as alive,
And I saw him dead!
[All]
The utter sap, sap, sap, sap sap!
The utter sap, sap, sap, sap, sap
[Geiru, Callisto, Mimi]
They had it coming,
[Dahlia, Dee, Maggey]
They had it coming
[Geiru, Callisto, Mimi]
They had it coming
[Dahlia, Dee, Maggey]
All along!
[Geiru, Callisto, Mimi]
Cause if they used us,
[Dahlia, Dee, Maggey]
And they abused us!
[Geiru, Callisto, Mimi]
How could you tell us
[Dahlia, Dee, Maggey]
That we were wrong?
[All]
He had it coming,
He had it coming,
He only had himself to blame
If you had been there,
If you had seen it,
I bet that you would have done the same!
[Geiru]
Give me my title right now!
[Mimi]
One shift, my ass!
[Dee]
Ran into the fence spike ten times!
[Maggey]
Tried to explain!
[Dahlia]
Number seventeen: the spread eagle!
[Callisto]
Creative Differences
[Geiru]
Crush
[Mimi]
Sleep
[Dee]
Squish
[Maggey]
Uh uh
[Dahlia]
Cecil
[Callisto]
Mack Rell!
Author's Note 2: Here I'll try to explain some of the choices I made for the song.
In the musical, the women dance with red scarves except for Hunyak, who has a white scarf. The red scarf is symbolic of them being guilty. Velma has two, since she killed two people. So Hunyak is innocent of the charges, since, sadly, it was easy enough for prosecutors to railroad an immigrant who speaks little English into murder charges. And insert your own joke about 1920's Chicago here. So I decided to do a meta nod and have Maggey, who is always innocent, singing Hunyak's part. Decided to just keep it in English. Originally, I thought of having a Borginian OC as Hunyak. I felt it was too bad that Machi was a guy, otherwise he'd have been perfect, since he was innocent too.
Maggey's story was from a scenario I wanted to put in a story somewhere. Maggey met an environmentalist named Bjorn Toulouse and they got married. The morning after their wedding night, Maggey woke up next to a cold, dead husband. And she was accused of murder. Specifically, injecting him with poison. The needle mark was on his hand. Maggey's fingerprints were on a syringe. Maggey insisted that her fingerprints have an innocent explanation: that Bjorn showed her how to give him an insulin shot just in case he were incapacitated and couldn't give it to himself.
The actual explanation is that Bjorn bought a bedframe made of bamboo imported from Southeast Asia. A snake with a broken fang crawled into the bedframe before it was packed and shipped to Bjorn. That night, when Bjorn and Maggey were sleeping in the bed, the snake crawled out of the frame and bit Bjorn. He died from the venom.
Case 4 of Spirit of Justice was my favorite in that game. And I felt bad for Geiru, even if she's a liar and a murderess. Just her expression when she's taken her wig off and explaining why she killed her master.
Gant I chose as the emcee just because I imagine him having a nice, strong voice.
Callisto Yew...hmm. I think it's up to interpretation whether or not she respected Byrne Faraday. I choose to believe that she did, but not enough to put him above her own self-preservation.
The Hotel Cecil is a legitimately creepy place. Supposedly Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, stayed there. So...another meta nod.
Dee was just perfect for June.
This was quite a challenging song to adapt, but I think I did a good job, and I hope you enjoyed it. I'm hoping to do something special for Snapshot #13: pure, unadulterated crack. I hope to unveil it soon!