Goodbye Means Beginning [PW:AAJFA&PW:AAT&T] [xOC] [2]

Hawthorne's Deception

[It was early February when Mia had called me in a flurry and asked where I had been by Eagle river the night before, but I was so confused that...I cost her the case.]

"Mia...what happened? Why am I a witness all of a sudden?" I asked with a panicked voice as my good friend and new lawyer Mia Fey had stood nervous in front of me, "Anyone who was near Eagle river that night and in the vicinity of the crime scene is a witness. So even if you didn't see anything, whatever you heard is essential." Diego backed her up against my pleas of not wanting to testify because of another "witness" named something Foster because her eyes were terrifying, like a monster ready to eat anything in its way. "You'll do fine, Lyla. Just don't forget to smile and talk loud enough for everyone to hear you." A glare from me was enough to shut him up and soon the trial began with sMiles calling me as the third witness following the first and second's lackluster testimony.

"Name and Occupation." Edgeworth stated as I swallowed, "Marie Li. I'm an independent songwriter." He shook his head and gave me a hard time, "Your full name and occupation, Ms. Li." Smothering the urge to glare at sMiles, I stated, "Lyla Marie Li. I'm an independent songwriter and a law school graduate. I'm currently waiting for my bar results." He then asked, "What did you see on the night of the murder?"
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Lyla's Testimony: What I heard from Under the Bridge.
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"I didn't see them but I could hear them through the rain from under the bridge. They were talking about how Valerie betrayed him. But it was really muffled." She continued, "There was a really loud sound of thunder toward the end of their talk and when I looked up, I saw rain slipping through the bridge planks." Mia pressed on her first statement, "They sounded muffled?" She nodded, "Yes. I could only make out a few words. "Someone had to take the fall" and "It wasn't my dies from the beginning..." Edgeworth claimed it had nothing to do with the case but Mia pressed about the bridge moving, "It's only my speculation, but I believe when I heard that thunder and lightning strike, they took that time to leave from the bridge..at least one of them did..."

Mia asked, "One of them?" Lyla added onto her testimony, "About ten or five minutes after I saw the bridge shake, it started to shake again but this time...in the direction of the bottom of Eagle mountain." Edgeworth tried to object that it was merely Lyla's speculation, but the judge overruled him and allowed Mia to continue to fight against him while calling Dahlia to the stand after Mia outed her real identity from her fake one as M. Foster, "You killed your sister because you didn't want Fowles to know the truth and expose everything you worked to pull off from that heist!!"

Dahlia glared at Lyla and began to implicate her as her sister's impersonator but Mia had quickly debunked that after pointing out that Lyla was shorter than the victim and wouldn't have been able to wear a coat, eventually making it clear that Dahlia was the perpetrator of the crime and her manipulations started way back when she and Fawles had first started dating. Her wits and deviousness even more cunning than her older step sister's who had been the root cause for her betrayal as she wanted to put the heist behind them, with the plans to take over the Kurain School of Chanelling on her mind after Morgan enlisted her help with Iris, "That's far-fetched Ms. Fey. I expected better to be honest."

The Judge was prepared to hand down his verdict until Lyla had shouted, "HOLD IT!!!" They all stared at her as she told them, "I have concrete evidence that it was Dahlia who killed Valerie and I can prove it by channeling her spirit!!" The Judge almost denied it until Edgeworth of all people allowed the channeling of Valerie Hawthorne...who upon being taken into Lyla's body, had implicated that Dahlia was responsible for everything but refused to state the crimes themselves. That was enough to indicte Dahlia as guilty and to have a special team of cops monitor her until they deemed she was harmless.

"You'll pay for this...Lyla Li."

[That was the last thing Dahlia had told me prior to being taken away and placed in the protection of the officers who were ordered to monitor her.]

[I don't think she'll ever forget that Mia and I were the ones who put her in that precarious situation and doomed her to be seen as a criminal. Not to mention making Miles face Manfred's wrath for technically losing the trial because the defense...despite having lost their defendant had successfully broken the prosecution's case before the verdict was handed down.]

[I don't know why I even stepped in that far during that trial. But now...I just want to forget about that wicked monster disguising herself as a weak little girl.]

[I want to rest now before my next case.]

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Hospital [Phoenix's Room]
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"That was the summary of Mia's first trial and now...I know why Lyla is familiar to me....because she and Marie are one and the same." He closed the computer and sighed, "Dahlia was the one that caused Lyla to be scarred from testifying from any further cases she was witness to. That's why....she left after Engarde's case when despite being out of it she was forced to testify about de Killer." He placed his hand to his forehead, 'That was why she took a break that she wanted to last forever until I found her in Kurain Village that day....why am I so stupid...?..'
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