NicetiesLATER
The Cleanup Hitter
Hello everyone!
I've recently posted a new fanfic, Turnabout Bitter Dreams, set in the Ace Attorney universe, specifically for Episode 3 of Ace Attorney Investigations 2. Here's the synopsis, for those interested:
Raymond Shields returns to the office his mentor once heralded and headed, twenty years ago.
He looks back on the last days of his time with Gregory--Mr. Edgeworth--and reflects on the introspections of justice, morality, and fate that Gregory's last crusade against injustice brought upon him, as he seeks to advocate for one of the last untied threads of the IS-7 Incident--
Katherine Hall.
Follow his perspective through the eyes of his mentor and mentee before taking up the badge himself and finally settling the case to rest.
(Spoilers for AAi2, particularly Episode 3, and also for Ace Attorney 1.)
Enjoy! Here's chapter one.
The lights were low on the cupboards and decks of the furniture adorning the lobby at Edgeworth Law Offices. It was dusk, only small snippets of the sun’s gleam seeping in through the rafters, otherwise masking the place in a sea of sable shades and unspoken misery.
My shoes rolled against the carpet, feeling the fine texture embedded within, and for a moment I rested on the threshold between the entrance and the way into Gregory’s haunt. Between light and dark elements, my figure limned itself into view, like Starry Night, a silhouette that was tall and lanky, save for the expression of blue in a tight line at my chest, and the indentations along my face that marked out the stubble of a goatee. I smiled, the lines of my mouth teetering upward, not quite a drastic action, but a gradual incline, slowed by the march of age.
“Looks spiffy as ever—when nobody can see the dust, anyway,” a small chuckle leaving my mouth.
A long moment of silence passed between me and the room, as if making some peace in a disconcerted fashion, this ritual of liminality that I always performed before entering through. Here, under the cover of black, I could see the outlines of the sofa cushioning and the paintings hanging on the walls; the slight shine of the television screen, and the vague shape of the photograph holder, still laid upright on that desk; a phantom object.
I don’t know why I let the darkness creep over the room for so long, languishing in the specificity of it all. Maybe it was so I could recreate its past form from twenty years ago, when the colors were brighter, but not overblown, and there was the easing scent of Ceylon tea wafting in from the back. There, over the coffee table, I remembered resting my shoes at the table’s rim, discussing the latest cases with Mr. Edgeworth by my side, an easygoing countenance between mentor and mentee, generational distance lessened by the calm of the tea’s flow.
These images were somehow much more vivid when given the blank, black canvas of lightlessness, my mind able to fill in the space with my own projections, my own impressions of the past. I didn’t have to reckon with what age did to a place, and a set of emotions.
But the day of reckoning comes for everyone and everything—even for law offices, though they’re probably quite a bit more austere about it than most. I sighed, trapping two of my fingers inward, and let my grasp pommel the lightswitch, an orange glow encompassing the room.
I closed my eyes, willing the darkness back for a longer moment. A part of me never wanted to open them, but that was just the foolish old me speaking.
“May as well see how things are looking,” I said to myself, opening forth, and taking stock of the office exhibit.
Dust speckled the cushion surfaces and the floral design on the floor, with light cobwebs sweeping at the walls—even the spiders had some sense of decorum, like they too were clients of Gregory’s. Bits of soot and dirt lay unhindered on the ground, the upholstery on the couch decaying a bit, the paint on the walls growing dry. I put a hand to my mouth—it was only a few weeks since I’d last been here, but it rattled my senses either way.
Even as I lived here a lot of the time, working on cases in Gregory’s departed stead, I couldn’t hope to resuscitate the energy that once marked the building. No, there was a sense of inauthenticity to renovating the place, to destroying the history that lay here, like a wrecking ball to a Roman statue; I had the will to leave the office well-preserved, even if mired in all the rotting of time.
I couldn’t bear to hear what he’d say if he saw me cleaning the surfaces, or polishing the desk.
“There’s a beauty to leaving things as they are,” he’d affirm, I know, in that usual deep voice of his, punctuated by the smoothness of a tea-drinker. Heh, he’d declaim it with such confidence and wisdom that I’d immediately forget I had the idea to begin with.
So the room was left untouched, save for the jostling of court papers and case notes as I worked to soldier on his legacy. I insisted each time I met a client that we discuss business at the local cafe instead of the office, where my mind was marshaled by the steeling grasp of caffeine—the hallmark of a twenty-something attorney, heralded from a long lineage of coffee addicts.
“Coffee—blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than the surface of Hell, it’s got it all, really,” I’d say to my clients before helping myself to a big gulp, washing away the pressure that Gregory’s hand always had on my shoulder and scalp.
Oh, yeah, I haven’t even mentioned it, have I? What a klutz.
I grasped the sleek-fitted fedora dangling around my head, gently parsing it between my fingers, and inspected it more clearly.
It was the only heirloom I had. Well, I say ‘heirloom,’ as if Mr. Edgeworth ever intended me to have the thing after he kicked the can. It was more like an heir-toss from the final moments of his life; a last gasp for someone to carry on his work.
Perhaps he intended it for Miles. He knew the boy’s precocious nature and, sans his disaffection for socialization, also discovered the mind he possessed for the law; reading through tomes of American legal textbooks while completing his arithmetic homework at 5, and devouring SCOTUS opinions by 8. The Prodigy before the prodigy, if you will. (And, thankfully, with a courtroom manner only verbally abusive, not physically...)
I kept the hat with me; the executors didn’t care much for it, after all, and I didn’t want that bastard von Karma to throw it in his big fireplace or something. I always wanted to show it to Miles, as a sort of peace offering, when the time was right—when he finally rended himself out from von Karma’s grip, and knew his calling as a defense attorney had come for him.
But Miles never called. Too broken to reckon with what came of his father, he was coerced to the prosecutor’s path by his new overlord, and I suppose it wasn’t any more right that I always had that inclination out for him; would he have taken up the defense’s badge if that earthquake never shook the land? Probably, I’d wager, but would I be any better than the God of Prosecutors if I laid my fist on his shoulder, and coerced him down the attorney’s avenue?
These questions still plague my mind, vipers of the psyche, but it’d be no use anyway now. He’s proven true to the Edgeworth name in his own right, and any credit I’d take—would be for an improvement in his people skills. I’ll gladly savor that victory, and I think he’d do well to appreciate it too!
Ah, but I’m just deluding myself, aren’t I. You didn’t come here for me to wax tears about a son’s connection to his father, and ‘father.’
You came for my own tears. So I’ll let ‘em rip. I’ll be the one to take the pathetic mantle.
The story of Gregory Edgeworth embodies itself in a case of sweet malice.
And the figurative toothache that would end up killing the greatest attorney I ever knew.
I've recently posted a new fanfic, Turnabout Bitter Dreams, set in the Ace Attorney universe, specifically for Episode 3 of Ace Attorney Investigations 2. Here's the synopsis, for those interested:
Raymond Shields returns to the office his mentor once heralded and headed, twenty years ago.
He looks back on the last days of his time with Gregory--Mr. Edgeworth--and reflects on the introspections of justice, morality, and fate that Gregory's last crusade against injustice brought upon him, as he seeks to advocate for one of the last untied threads of the IS-7 Incident--
Katherine Hall.
Follow his perspective through the eyes of his mentor and mentee before taking up the badge himself and finally settling the case to rest.
(Spoilers for AAi2, particularly Episode 3, and also for Ace Attorney 1.)
Enjoy! Here's chapter one.
The lights were low on the cupboards and decks of the furniture adorning the lobby at Edgeworth Law Offices. It was dusk, only small snippets of the sun’s gleam seeping in through the rafters, otherwise masking the place in a sea of sable shades and unspoken misery.
My shoes rolled against the carpet, feeling the fine texture embedded within, and for a moment I rested on the threshold between the entrance and the way into Gregory’s haunt. Between light and dark elements, my figure limned itself into view, like Starry Night, a silhouette that was tall and lanky, save for the expression of blue in a tight line at my chest, and the indentations along my face that marked out the stubble of a goatee. I smiled, the lines of my mouth teetering upward, not quite a drastic action, but a gradual incline, slowed by the march of age.
“Looks spiffy as ever—when nobody can see the dust, anyway,” a small chuckle leaving my mouth.
A long moment of silence passed between me and the room, as if making some peace in a disconcerted fashion, this ritual of liminality that I always performed before entering through. Here, under the cover of black, I could see the outlines of the sofa cushioning and the paintings hanging on the walls; the slight shine of the television screen, and the vague shape of the photograph holder, still laid upright on that desk; a phantom object.
I don’t know why I let the darkness creep over the room for so long, languishing in the specificity of it all. Maybe it was so I could recreate its past form from twenty years ago, when the colors were brighter, but not overblown, and there was the easing scent of Ceylon tea wafting in from the back. There, over the coffee table, I remembered resting my shoes at the table’s rim, discussing the latest cases with Mr. Edgeworth by my side, an easygoing countenance between mentor and mentee, generational distance lessened by the calm of the tea’s flow.
These images were somehow much more vivid when given the blank, black canvas of lightlessness, my mind able to fill in the space with my own projections, my own impressions of the past. I didn’t have to reckon with what age did to a place, and a set of emotions.
But the day of reckoning comes for everyone and everything—even for law offices, though they’re probably quite a bit more austere about it than most. I sighed, trapping two of my fingers inward, and let my grasp pommel the lightswitch, an orange glow encompassing the room.
I closed my eyes, willing the darkness back for a longer moment. A part of me never wanted to open them, but that was just the foolish old me speaking.
“May as well see how things are looking,” I said to myself, opening forth, and taking stock of the office exhibit.
Dust speckled the cushion surfaces and the floral design on the floor, with light cobwebs sweeping at the walls—even the spiders had some sense of decorum, like they too were clients of Gregory’s. Bits of soot and dirt lay unhindered on the ground, the upholstery on the couch decaying a bit, the paint on the walls growing dry. I put a hand to my mouth—it was only a few weeks since I’d last been here, but it rattled my senses either way.
Even as I lived here a lot of the time, working on cases in Gregory’s departed stead, I couldn’t hope to resuscitate the energy that once marked the building. No, there was a sense of inauthenticity to renovating the place, to destroying the history that lay here, like a wrecking ball to a Roman statue; I had the will to leave the office well-preserved, even if mired in all the rotting of time.
I couldn’t bear to hear what he’d say if he saw me cleaning the surfaces, or polishing the desk.
“There’s a beauty to leaving things as they are,” he’d affirm, I know, in that usual deep voice of his, punctuated by the smoothness of a tea-drinker. Heh, he’d declaim it with such confidence and wisdom that I’d immediately forget I had the idea to begin with.
So the room was left untouched, save for the jostling of court papers and case notes as I worked to soldier on his legacy. I insisted each time I met a client that we discuss business at the local cafe instead of the office, where my mind was marshaled by the steeling grasp of caffeine—the hallmark of a twenty-something attorney, heralded from a long lineage of coffee addicts.
“Coffee—blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than the surface of Hell, it’s got it all, really,” I’d say to my clients before helping myself to a big gulp, washing away the pressure that Gregory’s hand always had on my shoulder and scalp.
Oh, yeah, I haven’t even mentioned it, have I? What a klutz.
I grasped the sleek-fitted fedora dangling around my head, gently parsing it between my fingers, and inspected it more clearly.
It was the only heirloom I had. Well, I say ‘heirloom,’ as if Mr. Edgeworth ever intended me to have the thing after he kicked the can. It was more like an heir-toss from the final moments of his life; a last gasp for someone to carry on his work.
Perhaps he intended it for Miles. He knew the boy’s precocious nature and, sans his disaffection for socialization, also discovered the mind he possessed for the law; reading through tomes of American legal textbooks while completing his arithmetic homework at 5, and devouring SCOTUS opinions by 8. The Prodigy before the prodigy, if you will. (And, thankfully, with a courtroom manner only verbally abusive, not physically...)
I kept the hat with me; the executors didn’t care much for it, after all, and I didn’t want that bastard von Karma to throw it in his big fireplace or something. I always wanted to show it to Miles, as a sort of peace offering, when the time was right—when he finally rended himself out from von Karma’s grip, and knew his calling as a defense attorney had come for him.
But Miles never called. Too broken to reckon with what came of his father, he was coerced to the prosecutor’s path by his new overlord, and I suppose it wasn’t any more right that I always had that inclination out for him; would he have taken up the defense’s badge if that earthquake never shook the land? Probably, I’d wager, but would I be any better than the God of Prosecutors if I laid my fist on his shoulder, and coerced him down the attorney’s avenue?
These questions still plague my mind, vipers of the psyche, but it’d be no use anyway now. He’s proven true to the Edgeworth name in his own right, and any credit I’d take—would be for an improvement in his people skills. I’ll gladly savor that victory, and I think he’d do well to appreciate it too!
Ah, but I’m just deluding myself, aren’t I. You didn’t come here for me to wax tears about a son’s connection to his father, and ‘father.’
You came for my own tears. So I’ll let ‘em rip. I’ll be the one to take the pathetic mantle.
The story of Gregory Edgeworth embodies itself in a case of sweet malice.
And the figurative toothache that would end up killing the greatest attorney I ever knew.
