Ace Attorney: Criminal's Masquerade

Turnabout Twins, Part 3 (Anton)

The car that the body was sitting in had been devastated, to say the least. The car door was dented in incredibly, which practically folded the body inside over onto itself, which is not a good thing to see, let me tell you. If the body had been made up of paper, you'd have one scary looking paper folded in half vertically. 

I saw a large amount of blood at the scene, which led to me stuffing my face in James's sleeve. He wrapped an arm around me protectively, which both helped me feel better and warmed me up. I could see my breath coming out in clumps of fog before me, which led to me shivering and rubbing my arms together to keep myself warm, even with James being there to help me out. 

"That... That does not look pleasant," James said simply with a frown. 

"If you want to look at something a little better, then here," came the voice of Niamh from nearby. She pointed to something else nearby. I pulled myself away from James and managed to make my way through the snow to the area that she was pointing to. 

There was another car sitting there. It didn't look nearly as bad as the one that the body was sitting in, but it still looked pretty badly beaten up. The front section on the left had been badly dented in, which made it look much older than it really was. This car was a dirty gray color, which made me think that it probably was rather old, or at the very least hadn't been cleaned in a while. The front airbag had been deployed, which I would have expected. On the other car, the right car door had been dented in so badly that it managed to stretch across the passenger seat to nearly crush the one on the driver's side. 

"Wow," I heard James say as he looked back and forth between the two cars. "These... Don't look very pretty."

"I can't help but agree..." Niamh whispered nervously. I could hear her voice shaking, though I wasn't entirely sure if this was because she was concerned with how the victim had died or because it was too cold for her to really think well. It might have been a combination of both, which is what I was going for since I wasn't sure as to what it really was. 

"We should probably see if we can get an autopsy report. I'm sure that there's a police officer around here somewhere that can give us one," suggested James. I responded with a small nod, after which I dashed back over to his side and wrapped his arm around my body. I shuddered and shivered there, glad that I had him to help me through the chill. 

"Who are you people supposed to be?"

A voice snapped us out of our thoughts. A girl was standing behind us, dark brown hair in two ponytails. They were both rather long and reached her elbows. She had dark eyes as well that did nothing but glare us down. She took a small step forwards, a frown on her lips. 

As far as clothing went, this newcomer was wearing a heavy winter coat of a gray color that was tipped with fuzz on the edge of the hem and neck areas. She had dark jeans on that covered up all of her pale legs. Black boots were on her feet so that she could stand in the snow without fear of her feet growing cold in the process. Her breath, which fogged up much like the rest of ours, made her look like a dragon that was about to fry the brave hero just before he could save the damsel in distress princess at the end of a fairy tale. 

"We're the prosecutors on the case, and this is the lawyer," said Niamh in response. Her voice was once again shaking, though this time I was sure it was because of fear and not just the fact that she was incredibly cold up here on a high mountain in the freezing winds that late October had to offer to us. 

"I don't care," the girl snarled. "Get away from here already. You have no right to be hanging around here, you know. Why don't you go on and fill out your boring paperwork instead? That's definitely better for you to be doing than looking around a place like this."

"Might we ask for your name?" I heard James ask. I was still holding onto him tightly, though my grip had only grown more intense since this girl had appeared. She managed to scare me even more than Nevada did, which is saying a lot considering that she has her scissors and such...

"That's none of your business!" snapped the girl in response. "Just get out already! There are over a thousand better places for you to be than here!"

Nobody did anything to put up a fight. Not even James, who was normally so bold, could figure out something to say to stand up to her. Normally, he was good with girls, but I assumed that when he was frightened this way (since I knew for sure that he was just by the way that he had been speaking), he couldn't charm them the way that he did a majority of the time. 

We all ended up trudging back to the car. James took his seat in the driver's area and began to drive us away from the mountain. I welcomed the warm air that the conditioning of the car had to offer as I sat in the back seat. 

"So... That was a bit of a disaster," Niamh mumbled. 

"That's one way of putting it," James told her with a sigh. 

"I-I don't think a-anybody's going to be h-happy when they hear a-about this..." I murmured. "W-we only left b-because we were s-scared..."

"Who here thinks we shouldn't mention this to anyone?" asked James. 

When Niamh and I responded with shivers and mumbles, James had his answer of 'yes'. 

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please protect these kids tbh

-Digital