Turnabout Enemies

BONUS!!

While the story has ended, I wanted to place a little bit of bonus to really get into what I was looking for in this story and what to look forward to in the upcoming followup. I won't give anything away, but it's clear that it will have a lot more focus on Phoenix Wright or Nicolas De Killer. I mentioned about this kind of story at the beginning of this story as a separate story. I decided to make it a sequel to this story instead. Basically the story of Phoenix Wright being the son of Shelly De Killer, though I will get into that one later.

When I first came up with Turnabout Enemies, the idea I wanted to write about was a what-if DL-6. A lot of authors wrote their own ideas of what would happen if Gregory Edgeworth didn't die, but the big issue I had was that all of them often had Miles Edgeworth becoming a Defense Attorney. It felt like Miles Edgeworth becoming a Prosecutor happened because poor Daddy died and in real life, that's not always that simple. It felt like people ignored the very fact that Miles Edgeworth made the decision on his own to be a prosecutor and making that decision is exactly what his father wanted. In Miles Edgeworth Investigations 2, Gregory was worried for his son, because all he ever did was read law books and try to be like his father, not making decisions based on what he wanted. It makes sense, given that Miles was still a little kid and hasn't grown to the age of discovering his identity, but to say that would mean that Miles would eventually grow out of wanting to become a Defense Attorney and choose another career path.

The idea of creating Turnabout Enemies was to challenge my readers to see DL-6 and the canon characters in a new light. While my other what-if DL-6 stories from my Ace Attorney Collection did that, they rather challenged the readers to think of other ways it could've changed Miles Edgeworth, Gregory Edgeworth or both. This was the story that challenged readers to think of DL-6 and all the characters in canon in a different light. The question isn't how this story could've been different had it been done this way or that way, the question is why DL-6 was such a huge tragedy for all the characters in the story. Even someone like Wendy Oldbag or Damon Gant tell us that the tragedy effected other people than Miles Edgeworth, Manfred Von Karma, the Fey's or even Raymond Shields. This tragedy effected everyone.

I've already talked about the main characters and side characters, but now it's time to talk about the overlooked characters that we never thought would be effected by DL-6 until the ending. The first one is Patricka Roland (I know, it's actually Patricia Roland. I forgot!). In canon, we know her as the Warden and Blaise Debeste's lapdog. In this story, however, we learn that she was a spy trying to stop her brother, who was the head leader of the Smuggling Ring. She was being protected by Gregory Edgeworth from being found by the Smuggling Ring, whom Blaise Debeste works for. This tells us that at some point, after the death of Gregory Edgeworth, Blaise had found Patricka Roland's whereabouts.

Knowing this, it becomes understandable why Patricka Roland became Blaise Debeste's lapdog, including the body double I named Bobby. If we were to guess how Blaise found Patricka's location, we'd have to go back to DL-6 and Gregory's connection to IS-7, which is when Simon Keyes and Horace Knightly were found and taken to Happy Family Home where Patricka works. The rest is up to reader's interpretation, but it's easy to see how Blaise Debeste got a hold of Patricka and Bobby before wrapping them up in the assassination of the President of Zheng-Fa. This also includes Dogen. Having Dogen as another ex smuggler also makes sense, considering his connection with Patricka Roland in canon.

Having these three as ex smugglers gives Blaise a much greater motive for why he'd want to get rid of Gregory Edgeworth or set him up to be murdered by Manfred Von Karma. Gregory may've not been as big of a threat to Blaise as Miles, but that didn't make him nonthreatening. Gregory certainly is a force to be reckoned with, but only because his family is what makes him a threat. Gregory is the reason why Miles is a much bigger threat to Blaise and it's no different for the ex smugglers. As long as the ex smugglers are in hiding and far reach from Blaise, he will always be in fear that Gregory will have an ace up his sleeve. Blaise having those ex smugglers as his lapdogs and Miles being under Manfred Von Karma, who was under Blaise Debeste, would explain why neither of them no longer became a threat in canon... at least not until Miles proves himself to no longer follow Von Karma's teachings.