Ace Attorney: Criminal's Masquerade

The Winged Turnabout, Part 2 (James)

//September 2, 2033. Ahiru Duck Pond, 8:00 AM.//

The duck pond where the crime took place was rather pretty. I hadn't been part of an outdoor case in a while, so this was a nice change of pace. It was absolutely beautiful, if you want the truth. Some people call me 'gay' just because I like duck ponds and because I like other natural things, but that's wrong. I just happen to like boys. That's what makes me gay. Not the fact that I like duck ponds.

The pond was sitting in the middle of a small field. Small flowers were sprouting up from the ground. They were of all different colors. "This is pretty nice looking," I murmured under my breath. I crouched down onto the ground and stared at the ground. The duck pond was even more stunning. It was a blue color and must have been about five ten in diameter. It was pretty deep too. I could see it as a pretty good place to go swimming.

I felt a tiny hand on my hair. I pulled back from the pond. "Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow-" I said repeatedly as my head was pulled away from the natural scene before me. I gently unfurled Lois' hands so that they were no longer clutching my hair. I brushed through the pulled area and realized what I had been missing when I was staring at the beautiful pond.

A body was lying face down on the surface of the pool. There was a knife lodged in the victim's neck, so blood was spread out around the body. That sight was rather ominous. On top of that, I just had general bad memories with cases where the victim was drowned and somebody got cut by a sharp blade. The last time that something like this had happened, it was the QS-5 incident, otherwise known as one of the incidents that shall not be named. I shuddered at the thought and turned to Chrysalis.

Judging by the look on her face, which was a deep frown, she was thinking of the incident that shall not be named as well. "Of course he was drowned and somebody got stabbed," she said with a sigh. She turned to Mukuro not long after, most likely to distract herself from the mess at hand. "Do you know who the victim is yet?"

Mukuro shook her head. "No identifying information was found on his body. On top of that, his fingers are too wrinkly from the water for him to be identified from fingerprinting things. As of now, we have no idea what's going on with the victim. All we know is that he's dead," she explained.

Chrysalis frowned and looked back to the body. "Do you think that you'll be able to figure out who he is soon? It'll be pretty important for us to look into him and his background before the trial," she told Mukuro.

Mukuro shrugged. "Who knows? We're working to figure things out now as best we can. Hopefully, we'll have enough evidence to get Aiden out of the detention center after the first day of the trial. I know that the detention center is awful... He shouldn't be forced to stay there long. If he gets pushed in with the inmates and the hardened criminals, he'll never last a day! We have to get him out of there before things take a turn for the worse and we never see him again since a criminal decided to rough him up like criminals always do and-"

I placed a hand on her shoulder. "You can sleep easy, my lady. We'll find out who really did this and make them pay so that Aiden doesn't end up in prison. I promise," I assured her, trying my best so speak in my most calming tone so as not to alarm her in any way.

Mukuro took a deep breath. "Alright," she murmured. "I guess I'll tell you what we know right now. We know that the victim was stabbed in the neck as he was drowning. He fully died when he stopped breathing due to the drowning, so it's the real cause of death. We don't know when he died though, as when bodies are frozen or exposed to extreme heat, it's difficult to figure out when the time of death was. There's no way to do it, if you want the truth," she told us.

"Do we know the date at least?" I asked.

Mukuro nodded. "Yeah. It was this morning. A witness saw it and claimed that it took place this morning," she told us. "We couldn't squeeze the time out of said witness, but a little bit of testimony is better than none, right?"

I nodded my agreement. "Yeah," I said. "Do you know who this witness is?"

Mukuro shook her head. "No... I just know that we have a witness that knows about the case. I wasn't told any other information regarding the case. All I really know is that we have an unknown victim and that he died from drowning," she admitted. "You can go on and start investigating if you want."

"I think that we should go and talk to Aiden. There's not much to investigate in this situation. This case doesn't have much of a crime scene to look into since there are so many mysteries surrounding this murder," I told her. "Chrysalis? Can you load up the kids again and take them out to the car?"

"They're already pretty much loaded up, but I'll go on and take them to the car," she said. She rolled the stroller away to the car and put the two children into their respective car seats before folding up the stroller and setting it into the trunk of the car. I followed after her with a small frown. This case had just started up, but I was already starting to hate it with a burning passion.

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'are llamas or camels fluffy and which one feels like a briefcase'

'both of them are fluffy neither one feels like a briefcase'

-Digital