Ace Attorney: Criminal's Masquerade

Turnabout Twins, Part 1 (Chrysalis)

//October 31, 2033. Morix Law Offices, 8:23 AM//

I sat down on the couch and closed my eyes. Man, I sure was tired. The night before, I had stayed up late reading a new fan fiction that I was planning on publishing. I wanted to proof read it for any grammatical mistakes before I put it up on the internet. 

In the end, my little reading session lasted much longer than intended. I was up until three in the morning working on it. Of course, I forgot that I had to wake up at around seven the next morning, which meant that I was going to get minimal sleep. 

I was on the brink of nodding off and giving into the drowsiness that threatened to overcome me when the door was practically thrown open. I let out a shriek of shock and flailed around for a moment, nearly falling off of the couch in the process. I looked at the door. 

"Nevada?" I asked. I rubbed my eyes and got to my feet before walking to her side. "Is that you?"

Nevada replied with a nod. "Yeah, but that's not important! I need you to help me out!" he exclaimed. 

"What is it?" I questioned. "It sounds like something's wrong... Did something happen to Ghastly or Sora? You usually get panicky like this when something happens to them, so..."

"It's not that," Nevada said, shaking her head. "I'm going to be even higher on Bloomy's  list after today! Burkey got arrested again!"

"Again?" I asked in shock. "How many times is this? Four? Five? Six?"

Shortly afterwards, the door opened once again and none other than Anton stepped through. "What?" I asked, walking closer to him. "Are you real? Or am I hallucinating from my lack of sleep? I don't know... Oh, this isn't good..."

"U-um..." Anton stammered. "A-are you okay...?"

I touched his cheek and pinched it for a moment. "Okay... That's you... I'd recognize the squishiness of that cheek anywhere... But how are you here? Nevada just told me that you had been arrested again. I don't think you can be in two places at once. Unless there's some sort of special effect deal at play here..." I whispered, rubbing my head. Maybe I needed sleep much more than I thought...

"I'm sure that I saw a kid that looked just like him be dragged off by the cops, though!" Nevada cried out. "But if it wasn't Burkey... Then who was it?"

"I feel like this is something I would dream about..." I whispered. I stared longingly at the couch. "Maybe I'm asleep and just imagining this... That would make sense..."

Nevada gently pinched my arm. When I jumped in shock, she shook her head. "Nope. You're awake," she said. 

"I'm so confused..." I murmured. "I should probably sleep a little bit more before taking on any real cases..."

The door opened for the third time in the past three minutes to show none other than James. "Hey," he said simply. "What's going on in here? Why wasn't I invited to the party?"

"N-Nevada thinks that I-I was arrested... But I'm r-right here, so..." Anton told him, fidgeting with his fingers nervously. "I-I don't g-get it, b-but... I-I don't get a l-lot of things..."

"Alright then," said Nevada. "We need to figure out what in the world is going on here and fast. If this is some mess that involves Burkey being arrested, we had better get on that. Bloomy is going to be pissed if he ends up in jail for some reason or another."

"P-Polly won't be that m-mad..." Anton whispered, but I could tell that he was lying about that much. We all knew that Polly would be incredibly unhappy if she heard that Nevada hadn't done anything in the case of Anton being arrested wrongly. 

"I think that I know what you're talking about," James told us. "I saw something on the news about a young prosecutor being arrested earlier today. His name is Elec Daegana. He's known to be a prosecuting prodigy. He just started working at the Prosecutor's Office recently, according to Niamh. I've talked to her a few times about him. According to her, he looks almost identical to Anton, except he has brown hair instead of the blonde that Anton does."

"Hm... I guess that him being arrested makes a bit more sense," I said. "We should go and see him at the detention center. Maybe we could defend him from whatever charges are against him."

"If he's innocent, that is. You never know when a prosecutor is going to be guilty of something. Just look at that Dominic Forge guy from a few years ago," Nevada told us. 

"If he's nearly identical to Anton, chances are that he has a rather small stature. If you ask me, the chances of somebody that small doing something terrible and straight up awful are pretty slim," James pointed out. "We should at least hear him out for a moment."

I reached for a pen and paper, both of which were sitting on the counter nearby. I jotted down a small note to Cotoli about how James and I were going to take on a case. My brother was out getting candy for Halloween tonight, and I knew that if he came home and we weren't there, he would certainly panic. He was that type of person. 

"Hold it," Nevada told me. "You said earlier that you didn't sleep very much last night or something like that."

I froze on the spot. I was in trouble now. Nevada was incredibly defensive when it came to me and my health. There was no way that she was going to let me help on this case if she knew that I had only slept for four hours the night before. 

"Go on," Nevada said, pushing me towards the back room I shared with Cotoli. "We got this."

I let out a sigh. "Fine," I mumbled before sulking off. I knew that there was no arguing with her when she got like this. I might as well just accept that I wasn't going to be working today. 

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I don't know if I'm going to be updating again today but I can hope right

-Digital