Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Theme 3- Light

The two people sitting in the Wright Anything Agency at about the same time Ema was walking to the bus stop were quite literally burning the midnight oil. Or, well, they were burning a multitude of candles, but Apollo sure wished there were oil lamps. At least they might provide more light that the few measly candles he had manage to scavenge from the piles of junk scattered throughout the office. For some reason, even after Mr. Wright had gotten his attorney's badge back, he had refused to clean up the office. He'd also refused to change the name back to the Wright Law Offices, despite Apollo's urging.

Apollo was terrified that Trucy was going to knock over a candle as she paced- or rather, dashed around- the room. He was trying to protect the papers he was sorting through from danger by hunching over the pile of files he had placed them on. "Polly," Trucy called, startling him into knocking the entire pile to the ground. She didn't even blink. Apollo was always pretty jumpy before trials. "I think I'm going to call Daddy."

"Why can't you just let me help?" Apollo asked incredulously.

Trucy tilted her head and gave him the mysterious smile she had perfected. "A magician never reveals her tricks, Polly."

"So you're okay revealing it to Mr. Wright but not to me?"

"Don't be jealous," Trucy said, dodging the question.

Apollo shook his head and gave up on ever understanding the teenage magician. He was not jealous. He simply couldn't believe that it was almost one in the morning and she was still hanging around the office. It was proof that Mr. Wright really wasn't the greatest of father figures. Apollo sighed and bent to pick up the papers he had knocked over. All he wanted was to finish reading the files for the case, do his Chords of Steel workout, and go to sleep. Was that too much to ask for?

He looked over at Trucy and concluded that yes, it was.

Earlier that night….

"Apollo? Hey, Apollo, you in here?"

Apollo wanted to hide behind one of the giant piles of junk. Every time Trucy came to visit while he was working she always ended up finding something he had overlooked that made him look like an idiot. Not that he didn't (sort of) appreciate it, but he could only stand to be shown up by a teen so many times. And why was she here so late anyway? It was almost twelve am! "Shouldn't you be at home?" he called, turning towards the door.

She stood in the doorway, bouncing lightly in place. "Don't be such a downer, Polly. Whatcha doing?"

"Going over the case," he replied, rustling the files busily.

"Cool," she said, coming over to him. She leaned over his shoulder, scanning the list of evidence. "Hey, what's that receipt for?"

"It's the victim's wife's alibi," he explained, picking it up. "She was at a café eating lunch."

"But there's no time on that receipt," Trucy pointed out.

He brightened, suddenly feeling a bit better about the state of his next case, but also tried to not slam a palm to his forehead. How had he missed that? He'd known there was something wrong about the wife. When he had talked to her earlier that day she had been so twitchy. Now all he had to do was discredit three different eyewitness testimonies. That was going to be oh-so easy.

"I've got something to show you!" Trucy announced excitedly. Apollo flinched slightly, hoping that it wouldn't be another pair of Magic Panties. For some reason, she loved teasing him with those. She stepped back, her hands on her hips, and gave him the smile he recognized from the one time he had visited the Wonder Bar. "In this trick, I will be able to control the lights with just my mind." She flourished both her hands, showing that they were empty. "When I count to three, the lights will go out. One…. Two….. Three!" She threw her arms into the air dramatically, presumably to either trigger the lights to go out or make things more theatric.

It certainly was theatric, but nothing happened. She dropped her arms and stared quizzically at the ceiling. "Maybe you should try-" Apollo started to say. He was cut off by the room suddenly going dark.

Trucy bowed deeply while Apollo clapped half-heartedly. "Thank you, thank you."

Apollo really wanted to ask her how she had done it but knew that doing so would get him a minimum of a five minute lecture on artistic integrity. So he settled for trying to rush the trick to its ending quickly because he didn't want to be stuck in the office past midnight. Again. "Amazing," he said appreciatively. "Could you turn the lights on again now?"

There was a sheepish silence in which Apollo's hopes for getting out of the office anytime soon were hit repeatedly with a figurative rock. "I hadn't really thought that far ahead," Trucy said sheepishly. "I spent all afternoon trying to work out how to turn them off."

"How'd you turn them off? All you have to do is do the opposite to turn them back on!"

"I can't do that!" Trucy replied. "I don't know how the thing works in the first place!"

It ran through Apollo's mind that if she hadn't known how it worked she shouldn't have done it. He swallowed the words and tried to be helpful. "If you tell me how-"

"No," she said firmly, not even waiting for him to finish the sentence.

"But-"

"No way."

No matter how many times he asked, Trucy refused to let him help at all, which left him stuck there until she figured it out on her own. He managed to find some candles in the office and set them up strategically around the room. It took her almost an hour before she gave up and said she would call Mr. Wright. Amazingly, only a few seconds after he and Trucy stopped arguing about calling Mr. Wright, her phone rang.

"It's Daddy," she announced after checking the caller ID. She flipped open her phone and put it up to her ear. "Hello? Yeah, hi, Daddy." There was a pause in which Mr. Wright was obviously talking. "Sorry, I turned off all the lights for a trick and now I can't turn them back on." Apollo fervently wished that whatever Mr. Wright was saying would solve the entire mess. "Yeah, how'd you know?" Trucy continued. "Oh, that's all I had to do? Thanks." She listened for a moment more, said goodbye, and then hung up. "Daddy says you should go home now," she announced. "And that you should make sure I go home on time next time."

With that, she left the room, presumably to fix the lights. Apollo blew out all the candles and left as quickly as possible, taking the case files with him. Hopefully, he'd get out before she asked him for help.

A/N: Okay, this was definitely not my favorite chapter so far. I'm probably never going to write Apollo and Trucy ever again. I just don't really understand their personalities. Thanks for reading!