In which the writers make up a disease and bring in another OC. This character was going to be in our other Fire Emblem fanfic 'I Stole the King' as a wolfskin in Keaton's pack that studies humans like Hanneman studies Crests, but she was cut for time. So when we were writing this, we decided to turn this shape-shifting amateur scientist into the more competent "Dr. Wolfe."

Lesser notes: we made up a disease, Lucas and Elizabeth are random names we chose for the Robins, Seteth was too good a target, the random male nurse at the end is supposed to be Brady, and I hope we translated Cyril into a modern AU correctly.

If she'd known this was actually a part of being a lawyer, Rowena might have chosen a different career path, or at least decided to take on the Phoenix Wright role. But Iago had lured her into his trap with the idea of getting criminals off the streets, and she'd fallen for it. And, because she'd been stupid, she was forced to deal with Arthur.

Arthur Murphy was probably the worst detective out there. He wasn't much older than she was, but in the entire year he'd had his badge, he'd been shot in the arm, shot in the leg, shot in the FACE, nearly drowned, pickpocketed by a guy he was in the process of arresting, literally been buried in paperwork, and had nearly gotten mauled by a bear on three unrelated occasions. And, since Elise's bodyguard was set to marry Arthur in a matter of months, Rowena knew this was only what had happened on duty.

At least the plastic surgery after the face-shooting had made his chin look more heroic. Silver lining, I guess.

Silver linings were what Arthur knew best. And, apparently, ambushing law students in the library where he was going to give a speech to future officers about the risks of the job.

"Arthur," she said after a moment, "I'm not sure I can join your 'Friends of Justice' thing. It sounds too much like a vigilante group."

Arthur laughed, sounding almost heroic. He shut up instantly when she put a finger to her lips. "Nothing like that, Rowena," he promised. "Or would Miss Nohr be better? Miss Hoshido?"

"Rowena's fine, Arthur." She wasn't sure what name to use now, after all. "What would this group do, if not pull a Batman?"

"It's simply a collection of officers and lawyers dedicated to justice and purging corruption!"

"You do know we're in a library, right?"

Arthur immediately lowered his voice. "I just assumed, since your practice trial went the way it did, that you would be willing to assist me in my crusade to end the corruption in the system! Was I wrong?"

"No. Iago got what he deserved." She was going to regret not turning him away immediately. "What would we be doing?"

"All we can," Arthur answered seriously. "Once you get a real lawyer job, we would make a great team!"

"Are you offering to be the Gumshoe to my Edgeworth?" Yep, there it was - regret and terror, right on schedule. "How do you suggest we work that out?"

"I find as much evidence as I can about the crime. You won't take it to court unless we're certain it's the real thing. I can even make lunch for the group meetings!"

Her eye twitched before she could stop it, memories of his short time as Garon's personal chef bursting into her mind. "Please don't."

The memories came back to him, too, and he cringed in embarrassment. "Yes, I suppose that would be the best for everyone."

Rowena looked back at the clock on the wall, then started shoving her books into the briefcase she carried instead of a backpack. "I accept your offer, Detective," she said absently. "However, I would like to invite my brother to come along."

"Which brother?"

"The new one." She paused, realizing that it wasn't exactly true. "The old one...the twin. He's currently unemployed, but I'm sure he would find as much interest in justice as we would."

At the very least, they could use Arthur to dig into the whole dragon mess. She felt a bit guilty about using such an optimistic person as a pawn to get answers, but at the very least, they might need someone to make arrests if they found more information.

Elise had known Lysithea was sick. She just hadn't known what it was.

Now that she had a name for it, she was horrified.

Soap opera syndrome was a very rare disease, and Emblemme had one of the three surgeons in the county capable of fixing it. The symptoms were surprisingly vague, except for one - the loss of color everywhere in the body, including the hair. It was for this reason that people with darker skin were cured more often, because if someone was as pale as Lysithea when the draining started, they had only 50-50 odds of survival. And Lysithea's hair had been a darker shade of blonde before the disease took it…

"Can't you just get it fixed?"

Lysithea shook her head. "The process is expensive," she pointed out. "My parents have money, but they're not obscenely rich. They can pay for maybe two-thirds of it if they want to keep us fed and sheltered for the rest of our lives. If they're willing to cure my disease and then have all three of us starve, then maybe."

"There's no need to get sarcastic."

The girls were silent for a moment as they headed out the door, their friends Flayn and Sakura with them.

"You know," said Elise, "why don't we work on your bucket list? It'll help you do things you always wanted to do, and it'll help us cope." Her smile twitched as her sadness crept through.

"You want to spend an entire weekend doing nothing but play video games while surviving on fruit snacks and iced tea?" Lysithea asked, leading them to a quieter area where they were less likely to be overheard - the students occasionally came out here to smoke pot, and were usually too high to eavesdrop. "Because that and books are all I have on my bucket list."

"Not gonna lie, the video game thing sounds awesome, but really? Books?"

Lysithea shrugged. "I already learned how to bake, and trigonometry. There's not enough time to become a biologist."

"Then we'll do that! That way, even if…the worst happens…we'll still have memories of a great weekend. But for the record, when most teenage girls learn that they have a 50% chance of death, they add things to their bucket lists like kissing boys, eating so many chicken nuggets they pass out, getting in a high-speed car chase…" she lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Counting beans, if you catch my meaning."

It took a few seconds, but when she processed that what Elise was talking about had nothing to do with counting or beans at all, Lysithea turned bright red. Elise grinned – so there was still color in her blood, at least.

"I strongly advise against any bean-counting," Flayn insisted, as Sakura coughed to hide her own embarrassment. "It will ensure nothing but mocking for the rest of your life, no matter how long it may be."

Lysithea crossed her arms. "You sound as if you know this from experience, Flayn."

Flayn cleared her throat nervously. "I know from secondhand stories," she admitted. "So I suppose you could say I do know from experience. It just was not my own."

"Really?" Elise's plans forgotten for the moment, she turned on her green-haired friend. "Who was it? Family member? You are always telling stories about your weird uncles…"

"I have been sworn to secrecy," Flayn promised. "Family member or family friend, I am not to tell. My father would kill me."

"It was your dad?" Sakura yelped.

The other girls fell silent. They'd all met Flayn's father. He was always so strict despite his clear love for her that they had assumed he was a middle-aged man who just aged well. But then, he looked young enough to pass for a really tired 27 if he tried…could it really be that he was only in his thirties while his daughter was a senior in high school?

When an embarrassed Flayn held her finger to her lips and hissed "You did not hear that from me," Sakura's startled exclamation was taken as truth. "And since you have heard it, you are bound to the secret. Please don't make fun of him for it, he already has enough people who do that."

"His brothers...his friends...his girlfriend..." she went from looking at her friends to looking at the grass. "His daughter..."

"Were you the result?" Elise asked, dropping her voice to a point that Flayn almost had to read her lips.

"Please stop talking about it."

Three teenagers crossed their hearts together. "I just wanted a distraction," Elise mumbled.

"Same," Lysithea said quietly, looking around to make sure they weren't heard. "I'm worried about how to break it to Cyril."

Cyril, the boy in the grade below them that Lysithea had been helping with his homework since his mom found out about his reading disability. Cyril, who had recently written Lysithea a letter on his own. Cyril, who couldn't be more obvious about his crush if he tried.

The light bulb went off in Elise's head. "You said your parents can pay for most of it and still keep you guys alive?"

"Why?" Lysithea asked. She hated taking things from her rich friends, and from the sound of her voice, it seemed that Elise planned to pay for some of the life-saving surgery.

"I might be able to convince my dad to pay for the rest." Before her friend could object, Elise covered her mouth. "Only some of it will be a gift. You'll work the rest of it off. Ok?" Lysithea nodded. Elise pulled her hand off her mouth.

"I-I can try, too," Sakura added. "You can come work for my moth..." she stopped to take a deep, shaky breath before correcting herself. "I mean, my b-brother, all through college."

"And make my birthday cakes from this March until I'm married," Elise added. "No matter how many layers. No matter how ridiculous it gets."

Lysithea tried to focus on her friends through her tears, and then hugged them both. "Thank you," she whispered. "Those sound like fair trades. But how are you going to pull it off?"

"My inher-inheritance," Sakura said quickly. "It was s-supposed to be a college fund, but my b-bail jar can cover the first s-semester. Saving a life is more important."

"I meant Elise. Your mom left you money, but her dad..."

"I know how to handle my dad," Elise promised. "You just focus on keeping yourself alive, and on picking the best games for our bucket list weekend."

"Elise," Garon said, confused as to how his youngest child had managed to sneak into his office without him noticing, "I can't hand over $20,000 without a good reason."

"Charity," Elise answered at once.

"Not good enough."

"Saving a life from soap opera syndrome."

"That's not a thing."

"Yes it is." When Garon still looked like he didn't believe her, Elise pulled up her phone to show him the wikipedia page. "It's a rare disease that sucks color from people as well as health. It's caused by a twisting of the abdominal gland. It can be fixed with a surgical procedure but there are only a few doctors in the area capable of it."

Garon shook his head. "There's no such thing as an abdominal gland, it shouldn't be possible to get it twisted, and if it did work like that, there should be more than three doctors trained in it."

"There are," Elise pointed out, "but there are only three surgeons in the area who specialize in it. Naturally, the doctor needs to be paid for how precise it needs to be, and the hospital needs to be paid, and the recovery room, too -"

"I know how hospital bills work, Elise. And I'm sorry, but soap opera syndrome still sounds like a made-up disease."

"Threes of people died from it last decade!"

"I don't care what Wikipedia says!"

Elise leaned back, surprised at the words he'd taken right from her teacher. "You sound like Mr. Eisner," she said to herself, before shaking it off. "Then what about this? Lysithea attracted the attention of the son of a single mom." She didn't want to go this far, but to save a life, she would. "Save the girl, make the boy happy. If the boy's happy, the mom will be, too."

Granted, she'd met Cyril's mom - she was friends with Flayn's dad, and often accompanied her son to Flayn's birthday parties. Rhea did not seem like a woman who could be 'happy.' But she'd take 'pleased,' and if she knew Garon, so would he.

Sure enough, he stopped to listen. "You really think that it's a disease?" Elise nodded. "I'll do it. But if it's a scam, you'll have to work it off in extra chores."

"Ok."

Garon stood up. "All right. Let me meet the girl and her parents...and maybe her boyfriend. And his mom."

She'd have to answer to Xander for this later, wouldn't she?

Revan was honestly impressed at how many sets of twins in Emblemme were interested in conspiracy theories. He knew Kaze and Saizo would be involved, and was pretty sure Felicia would drag Flora along to at least one meeting, but the other faces surprised him. Jonah and Joanna, the children of the legendary cop-turned-mechanic Jeralt Eisner and teachers at Sakura's high school. Lucas and Elizabeth Robinson, who were Mikoto's age and had three adult children between them, had shown up because they wanted to see what would happen. Even Marc and Morgan, the youngest children of the Robinson twins, had shown up, under the excuse that they were also born on the same day and were therefore twin cousins, which Revan had allowed because 'Mystery Twins' was just the name of the meeting group.

"Ok, gang," he said as he pulled a conspiracy board out from under a table. "Let's get the first meeting of the Mystery Twin Investigation Squad started so Rowena can drop our suspicions on Murphy. We know that there's a mysterious force that has something to do with dragons operating behind the scenes of the city. We suspect that they hired Hans and killed Iago. What I propose is that the Dragon Noodle restaurant is the cover-up for a smuggling organization where they port bootleg games to other countries." He grinned, smile twitching. "That sounds like a real theory, right? Not something I made up?"

"That sounds like hot garbage, actually," Rowena answered at once. "Any other theories?"

"What if it's an actual dragon?" Revan suggested. "What if it used its magical powers to make an entire chunk of land go kaplunk from existence and memories? What if there's mystical water that allows travel to -"

"That's even worse," Joanna interrupted.

Revan slumped in his seat. "Any other ideas, then?" Flora raised her hand, much to Revan's annoyance. "You put that hand down forever."

"I'm only trying to contribute," Flora protested. "I don't see anyone else contributing."

"Ok, fine, go."

Flora grinned maniacally. "So. Look at how many pairs of twins you've gathered here today. I'd say we have half the twins in Emblemme gathered at this meeting. And why?"

"Because Hoshido promised free pizza at the event," Jonah answered at once, holding up a flyer to prove his point.

"That was a typo," said Revan. Ryoma had kept Mikoto's 'cut him off until he gets a job' policy, unfortunately.

Flora continued on as if unaware of the interruption. "Emblemme is a weird town. Who's to say that we won't develop twin telepathy here? We've got half the city's adult twins here already. My theory is that the dragons are responsible for us meeting here tonight."

"I'm gonna pull the plug on her right now," said Revan, but Rowena nudged him.

"Don't. I want to see where she's going with this."

"Thank you," said Flora, and continued on. "They were responsible for separating Revan and Rowena in that car wreck years ago. Then they reunited them over a decade later. They wanted to test if they felt each other's emotions over the time spent apart. They want to study all of us."

Felicia jumped to her feet. "I refuse to be a lab rat!" she cried, and pulled a throwing knife from her purse with a shaky hand. "Come and fight me, dragons!"

"You can't fight a dragon with a knife!" Flora protested, jumping into action to chase her sister down the hall. "I made the whole thing up, you can't fight a dragon at all!"

The door closed behind them. The Eisners made eye contact, as if they had already developed twin telepathy and were daring each other to be the one to speak. Revan didn't give them a chance. "All in favor of disbanding the group?" Everyone agreed, even Rowena and Kaze. "Motion carried."

"But what about the pizza?" Jonah asked.

"It was a typo," Revan insisted. "I meant for it to say fee pizza - I'll order it, but you all have to chip in."

"Huh," said Saizo as the disappointed Eisner twins headed on their way out. "I didn't think it was possible, but you've proven me wrong. You've reached a whole new level of desperation. You've invented the reverse bribe."

Revan faceplanted onto the table. "Just get out," he said weakly, to Saizo's silent amusement.

When it was just the two of them left, Rowena pulled her brother to his feet. "Maybe it's better to just work at this as a duo. We have stakes in this. People like Flora are just here to have fun."

"You're probably right. I just thought that we'd have an easier time finding the dragons if we had more people."

"We can still ask them to keep an eye out for information."

Revan looked over at the empty room he'd talked her into renting for the first meeting. "My place next week," he decided. "Ryoma won't mind us using the basement."

School was...interesting, the following day.

Lysithea walked in with Sakura, Flayn, Elise and Cyril, while Flayn was rambling about trying to call Lysithea three times and never being answered once.

"I was driving, ok?" Lysithea hissed as the five approached the school building. "I stole my dad's car, got in a high-speed chase, and had fun. Until I got pulled over and had to bribe the cop to let me go."

"I didn't know there were dirty cops in Emblemme," said Elise.

"Apparently. Luckily, he charges a reasonable rate for bribes - I only had to hand over all the cash I had in my wallet."

"Was it a lot?"

"Not really. But hey, what am I supposed to do? It's not like I can go up to the captain and say, 'Hey, one of your guys pulled me over for speeding and I didn't catch his name or remember his face but I bribed him for complete immunity for seven dollars.' That would just ruin the whole reason for the bribe, and I wouldn't get my money back."

"You wasted your money on that?" Cyril complained. "I could've been your one phone call. A prison break was always on my bucket list!"

"I didn't think you'd answer," she admitted.

"I would if you were calling! I had plans! Do you know how weak the security system is in that place?"

"I do," Lysithea agreed. "The question is, how do you know?"

Cyril brushed it off. "My mom," he said, his only explanation. "And since she'd kick me out if I got arrested -"

"She adopted you because you tried to steal hercar," Lysithea reminded him.

"I wanted to get out of Emblemme." He said it like it was obvious.

"No one gets out of Emblemme," Elise pointed out. "I swear the town's cursed."

"That isn't my point!" Cyril protested. "I had blueprints and everything, and then it was ruined by dirty cops!"

Lysithea put a hand on his arm to calm him. It worked immediately. "The point is, I didn't think you would want to break the law. Your mom would hate it."

"Probably," Cyril agreed, defeated. He couldn't make his mother angry.

"And besides, Dr. Wolfe thought it was funny and cut the price to make it affordable." She smiled, but it wasn't entirely happy. "Turns out, hospital bills are negotiable. Who knew?"

"So you have a date set?" Flayn asked, her voice quiet.

Lysithea nodded, the humor in her situation gone. "It's best to get it over with as soon as possible. Two weeks from Saturday."

"Then we'll be there as support!" Elise cheered. "And Cyril...bring your mom."

It said a lot about their friendship that he didn't even ask.

A few Saturdays later, Elise led her father into the hospital waiting room. Lysithea was with her parents and doctor in her room, but they had Sakura, Flayn, and Flayn's dad to talk to. Elise tried not to drop any hints that she knew the man's secrets.

"I guess it is a real disease," Garon observed, and Flayn's father looked up, disappointed.

"Aren't you here to be supportive to your daughter in case things go wrong with her friend?" he asked.

"They better not," Garon grumbled to himself. "I paid good money for this."

"You paid for Lysithea's surgery?"

"Fraction of it," Garon confirmed. "Look, I was promised to meet the single mom of one of Elise's guy friends. You don't look like a single mom."

"How observant of you." The green-haired man thought it over, going through the very short list of boys that Flayn was allowed to associate with. Realizing that only one of them had a single mom, he suddenly switched his demeanor entirely, from sarcastic to amused. "Ah. Well, then, this should be fun."

Garon noted that this was probably his first red flag. But then his thoughts were interrupted by a boy's voice calling his daughter's name, and a teenager with light brown skin and dark hair ran forward, nearly crashing into Elise in his panic.

"I've been looking everywhere for ya," he said, and Elise patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. "I didn't miss it, did I? I got turned around in the hallway and ended up halfway to the maternity ward -"

The boy was followed by a tall, graceful woman who looked nothing like him. Pale, with pale green hair and eyes filled with a dark side that didn't match her kind smile. As Elise filled the boy in, Garon took a moment to recognize her. Then he did, and he groaned.

"You're the single mom of Elise's guy friend?"

"Garon Nohr." Rhea's smile disappeared. "I remember you from your little drunk driving incident."

"Alleged incident," Garon insisted. "Technically, I was under the legal limit at the time."

"So you're merely a bad driver who doesn't deserve a license."

Garon flinched. "You do know where to strike."

"I'm a lawyer, Garon."

The door to a room opened, and they all looked to see. A male nurse, with red hair and a face like a gargoyle, was pushing a gurney with a blanket over a person-shaped lump, and Cyril jumped to the absolute worst conclusion.

"Don't take her away!" he called as the nurse panicked and walked faster. Sakura and Flayn each grabbed one of Cyril's arms, and Elise threw her arms around his chest to hold him back, but Cyril kept on moving, though slowed down by the 300 pounds of girl he was dragging along. "Let me...say thank you!"

Another door opened, and the doctor peeked out. She was a young woman, likely on one of her first real surgeries, but she did not seem surprised to find four teenagers chasing a corpse down the hall - or at least not as surprised as she was when the 'corpse' moved, knocking off the sheet and revealing what appeared to be a nursing student and scaring several doctors.

"What people won't do to get out of work," the doctor muttered as the student hopped off the gurney at the nurse's cry of "SCATTER!" Shaking her head in disappointment, the doctor looked to the teary-eyed teens. "You must be friends of Lysithea Ordelia. She's fine. She warned me that you might be causing a ruckus in the hallway." She tilted her head into the room. "She's with her parents right now, but she did want to see you before visiting hours were over. Should I kick them out for you?"

She was joking. That much was clear to the others, but Lysithea's parents spotted them and, promising their daughter that her mother would be staying with her for the night and her father would be back the following day, they started to leave.

The doctor pretended not to hear Lysithea asking her father to come back with some cake. And they all pretended not to hear the parents thanking Elise, Sakura, and Garon for helping them save her.

The girls had gone home. Lysithea's mother was out getting food. Rhea had not followed her son to the room. That left two teenagers alone.

Cyril had the biggest, most vindictive smile Lysithea had ever seen on his face, as he proceeded to dump the backpack out on her bed. Heavy books, both for school and for her own personal reading, slid out, accompanied by notebooks and many pencils, all of which promptly ended up on the floor.

"You did tell me to bring you your homework if you woke up," he said as if that defended his actions.

Lysithea groaned and pulled her pillow over her head. "I don't want to do homework. You can't make me."

"But I thought big girls needed to do their homework?" he taunted, and she lifted the pillow just long enough to meet his eyes before covering hers again.

"I'm older than you."

"Yeah, you've mentioned that. But at least I can leave the room."

"Fight me," she mumbled into the pillow.

"I'd destroy you," he replied immediately.

"Probably," she admitted, "but I'd take you with me."

Cyril's eyes wandered to the heart monitor, wondering if it really was "just a precaution," as the nurse had said.

"I don't think so," he said after a moment of thought. "Not until you're out of here, at least."

She lowered the pillow, a thought at the front of her mind that she did not want to think of, but now couldn't stop thinking about. Kiss a boy...

This was stupid.

But it did make her new bucket list.

"Hey, Cyril. You're a guy, right?"

"Unless I'm as bad at biology as I am at reading, yes."

Lysithea was quiet. Her heart monitor was not. Cyril looked over at it, mildly alarmed, but when he saw that she seemed to be fine he calmed down. "Doing ok?"

"I just…" How was she going to do this?

She wasn't. Not now, anyway. She had time to figure it out.

"What would be on a guy's bucket list?"

"Uh..." he looked over at the door, as if checking for adults. "I think you can guess what's on 95% of all guys' bucket lists, Lysithea."

"Other than sex."

Cyril stayed quiet for a long time. Then, very carefully, he approached the bed, leaned in, and said, "Have you ever considered jumping off a roof into a swimming pool?"