The Devil's Turnabout

Chapter 1

well... it's certainly been awhile. 

I'm quite moved by the fact that people still read and enjoy my stories here. I'd really like to thank you all for your support. now that it's been... around seven years since I've last posted to this account, a lot has changed. I'll be attending law school in the fall, and I figured there's really no better time to post an ace attorney fanfic, is there?

I hope you all enjoy. thank you, again.

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October 9th, 2026

As soon as the trial ended, Klavier was gone.

He disappeared in an instant, as though he were scraps of paper scattered to the wind. One moment he was there, and the next Apollo looked up from his briefcase to find the opposing bench abandoned.

At first, Apollo was envious. He felt spent and clammy, like after running the mile in high school. Solitude sounded refreshing and peaceful after the unblinking stare of hundreds of eyes on him, the courtroom waiting in bated breath for him to prove Kristoph wrong. A part of him still couldn't believe what he'd just done— testing an all-new legal system, finding Kristoph guilty yet again.

As he left the courtroom, however, that awful, ugly laughter followed. It rang in Apollo's ears as though from right behind him, as though Kristoph had never left at all.

Apollo was less jealous as he decided it may better be drowned out in conversation— in gushes of praise from Trucy, clinging to his arm with a smile she wore as well as that gaudy silk hat, and the quieter, more cynical nod from Phoenix Wright, acknowledgement that Apollo had done his job well.

Perhaps they spoke to Apollo only because they heard it too, only because some noise had to plaster over the laughter. Apollo thought of the cover tarps he saw on crime scenes, sickly yellow plastic only barely disguising bodies and blood. Sometimes the only way to endure something so visceral, so gruesome, was to put it out of mind.

Apollo didn't know if such a thing were even possible. He'd never met anyone at a crime scene who didn't know precisely what laid under the tarp.

It was only when Trucy's fingers tightened and her eyes shone with concern that Apollo realized he hadn't hidden his alarm very well. He'd been told, by friends and foster parents and every person in-between, that he wore his heart on his sleeve.

He did so despise lying.

"Polly," Trucy's eyes narrowed just slightly. Apollo knew she doesn't need to use any sort of power to tell he was shaken. "You haven't been saying much."

"I'm fine." Apollo answered quickly and simply. He wanted nothing less than for Trucy to worry on his behalf, not after she had just watched the trial of her father's murderer.

"You say that too much! Nobody's fine all the time."

Apollo could say the same to her, but it wasn't the time nor the place. "We don't have to talk about it, Truce."

Apollo didn't want to. He remembered the months after Mr. Gavin's first arrest. They were silent in a way this couldn't possibly be. The office had been dim and empty without him— a lifeless husk, like a zombie lurching forwards with only vague memories of life. Apollo had gathered his things quickly, unable to shake the feeling that he was trespassing. This was a place no person should dwell.

Apollo still woke up at seven-thirty for the next week, ready to dress and come to a job that no longer existed, working for a boss who was no longer there. He wrung out emergency funds and collected interviews for jobs that would never take him— an attorney with one trial's worth of experience, and the most baggage the law world had seen since Phoenix Wright's disbarment.