Ace Attorney: Council of Crime

Part 14 (Charlotte)

First and foremost, there's no way that I could be the one who was sending you those messages," I began. "After all, I was with Q when the first message came in, and he was watching me like a hawk."

"How do we know you didn't record it ahead of time and have a member of the Kuranin play back the footage?" Celosia (I heard that's her name from X's email) asked, her eyes challenging and dark as the night.

"I was with Q all day. There was no time for me to record any sort of message that day for it to be repeated back. Good enough for you?" I told her with a smirk.

Celosia sighed. "You sure are a difficult agent to work with, L," she complained.

"Will you shut up for one second?" Connor snarled at her, making Celosia roll her eyes. Moody teenager phase much?

"Did you guys find out anything else about the Kuranin?" X asked, turning to J.

"Here it comes again!" F sighed in exasperation. I groaned under my breath. I should have known this was going to come up sooner or later with J here.

"Of course we found things out!" J grinned. "Felix and I have been doing a bit of research, and-"

I started laughing. J frowned at me. "What?"

"You call Griffin by his first name despite the fact that he screws up so often!!" I continued to laugh, doubling over in giggles. "I can't believe that you would really sink that low, J!!"

"Shut up. He's actually a pretty good guy if you just give him a chance every once in a while, I'll have you know," J declared, glaring at me darkly. "Thank you very much, L." She looked ready to fire an insult at me with that stony of a gaze, but I shrugged it off. J was always extremely defensive, especially when it came to Griffin's shenanigans.

"Anyways, what did you find out?" N asked, interrupting L and I before we could start a full blown argument.

"I'm pretty sure that the Kuranin is a serial killer group of some sort," J began.

"We all knew that was coming," I muttered, rolling my eyes.

"No need to start arguing," T cut in with her heavy British accent.

"Yeah. What did you and Griffin find?" M asked.

"Well, like I said, the Kuranin is some sort of serial killer. And like every serial killer, they have to have a reason for committing all of these crimes. For most, it's something traumatic and scarring to cause them to turn on their own morals like this," J explained, beginning her typical serial killer monologue she's gone on before about the UCA, Shinokage, Genocide Jack, Gentleman Murderer, and every other big time killer to ever grace the face of this earth. It got old after a while.

And by that I mean the first time I heard it, it was already old.

"What sort of motive could they possibly have for committing all of these crimes?" Vesgate asked me. "We found a connection between all of the victims, but the Kuranin is thought to be a group of people and not just one, who we think is Pierre Giuseppe."

"Maybe he got a group of criminals together to commit all of these crimes," I suggested. "Or your mysterious caller who won't leave Interpol alone is helping him out."

"She keeps telling us insistently that she isn't a member of the Kuranin, so I doubt that she would be doing something like that with our criminal gang," N told me. "She must have some other sort of connection to them, tight enough that she can get information, but loose enough that she isn't killing the victims."

"Who's to say that she Isn't killing off those victims but putting on an innocent face?" I asked him, sure not to sass off so much that I would lose my job to something silly like this. M did get grumpy with people who messed with N, after all.

"I don't think so," F told me. "She wouldn't be insisting on our mission to catch the Kuranin so forcefully if she were really helping them kill."

"So this girl is just there with the Kuranin? That makes sense," I groaned, unhappy at having been wrong.

"Who's to say it isn't true? The possibility is there," T pointed out. Her accent, especially in this instance, made her sound as snooty as an heiress.

I groaned. "You guys don't think that she did it?" I asked. Maybe I was grumpy because my skin was on the line, but I just wanted these guys to shut up. They were criticizing my ideas, so them being quiet sounded more than a little bit delightful in my ears.

"There isn't any proof that she did or didn't do it," X cut in, stopping the argument instantly. "So what about we stop fighting and think through that fact a little more before accusing the weird girl who keeps calling us?"

"Fine..." I muttered, looking down with a negative and unhappy sheen to my gaze.

"But about the Kuranin's motivations... What do you guys think the reasoning behind these murders?" J cut in. "I don't have many ideas personally. Been too busy investigating killers like GJ and the Shinokage, if you know what I mean."

"Of course we know," I snapped at her. Who didn't know she was obsessed with mad killers if they were involved with Interpol? Correct answer: nobody's that clueless.

"What about we stop fighting and start talking about the Kuranin and what we think their potential motives could be?" X cut in. I nodded. I was sick of fighting over this.

------------------------------------------------

Life is not being kind to me today because I entered my writing into a contest and the judge was biased so only people involved with her won (therefore I lost and probably really badly) so I'll just scream in the corner because people suck and I just want the world to leave me alone for a while

-Digital