Warning for language; not anything more than your average PG-13 movie, but still stronger than my usual stuff.
It was a fairly quiet day in the Courthouse; the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the grass was green (though if the water crisis continued, it would soon be brown). Everyone seemed in a good mood; pedestrians waved at each other, and the officers of the law in the courthouse were also in high spirits, even the ones who were not Detective Dick
The good mood, however, did not spread to one man entering he courthouse. He wore a long coat, despite the summer heat, and a hat that hung over his eyes, obscuring his face from view. Perhaps this should have been a warning sign to the security guard, but the guard had become immured to various characters coming in and out of the courthouse over the years. After you've had to pat down Max Galactica, you've seen it all.
The trenchcoated man's name was Viol Eint-Mann, and he was on a mission. He patted a bulge under his coat, giving a cold smile at the lack of give, and allowed himself to reminisce as to why he was here.
Viol, you see, had a half-brother, Cray Z. Mann. They weren't close, but they both worked in the family business together, hauling... various cargoes that they never asked too many questions about, but were paid very much to move.
It wasn't that they only hauled drugs, per se, they also smuggled weapons, people, and on one memorable occasion, a live Bengal tiger/jaguar hybrid. Like UPS, but for criminals.
However, while the job may have paid well, it also had a fair measure of risk. Cray had gotten cocky; he bungled a checkpoint and the officers caught him with 250 pounds of cocaine, a stolen piece of art, and three illegally hybridized orchids in his van. He tried to escape, and almost made it too, but some enterprising rookie officer got in the way. Cray had done the sensible thing; gotten the officer out of the way. Permanently.
It was a perfectly reasonable course of action for anyone in the business. However, the judge did not agree, and Cray was sent to the hangman's noose not a month later. Viol never got to see his brother again, after the trial. Outstanding warrants make prison visits difficult, you see.
It was all that damned prosecutor's fault, Viol had decided, watching the trial footage. He didn't allow Cray to explain himself properly, and didn't let him really talk about his family's business. Cold-hearted bastard. The son of a bitch had even had the nerve to look satisfied at his brother's conviction, like he'd done the public a service.
Prosecutors were like that, he'd discovered, watching more and more trials. Smug, satisfied, and ruthless. They were a blight on the legal system, one that needed to be cured, like cancer. And, well, to cure cancer, you needed to attack it. He'd simply brought a tool more effective than chemo drugs.
He patted the protrusion under his coat again.
The sign on the door in front of him was lettered plainly: PROSECUTOR BREAK ROOM. Why the uptight bastards couldn't share a break room with everyone else was beyond him. He slammed the door open, reaching under his coat and removing a fully automatic rifle.
One of the perks of his family business was the occasional sampling of the goods.
He pointed it into the room, yelling to the prosecutors inside, "You die today for what you did to my brother!"
Short and to the point. He wanted them to know why they were dying; he wasn't heartless like them.
There were four inside, on what looked like a lunch break. One was dressed like a ponce, with a damned cravat and all, standing at the head of the table like he was speaking. Another, the only woman of the group, reminded him of the swords he occasionally transported for the Yakuza- steely gray and sharp. The remaining two were also not dressed normally. One was a goth, or maybe emo, with a hawk sitting on his shoulder. The other was the most conservatively dressed, but he had hair like a punk rocker and a bright purple suit. He appeared to be tuning a guitar instead of eating, like the other two.
"Hands up!" He yelled at them. He shot a couple rounds into the ceiling to make his point. It usually worked to scare unruly clients, so it would work on these gutless cowards, too.
Except it didn't. They put their hands up, to be certain, but they didn't look scared. In fact, the poncy one looked bored.
"Who do I kill first?" He questioned, and pointed the gun at the fancy man, who still looked bored. He decided to switch tactics, and instead aimed for each of his colleagues in turn, settling on the steely woman that he'd been talking to.
"The rock-and-roller? The Emo? Or... the pretty lady?" He leered at her, quite talked by what her outfit revealed. Those curves...
"On second thought, I think I'll wait a while to kill you. Let's have some fun first!" He growled, and stepped toward her. Finally, the ponce acted.
Except, of course, it wasn't a struggle like Viol was expecting. No, the damned lawyer was a coward.
"Objection!" He shouted, with as much force as he could muster.
Viol turned to mock him for his feeble effort, but then felt the word hit him. Not merely metaphorically; it felt like a wall of kanji was suddenly slamming into him, brick by brick. If this was what court cases were like everyday, maybe lawyers weren't totally spineless.
While he was still moderately stunned, he felt his gun being snapped out of his hands by- was that a whip? The steely woman was on the other end, swiping the gun away from him and into the hands of the ponce. He didn't have time to keep track of it, though, because suddenly he had an angry hawk in his face, trying to rip it up like the blasted bird would a field mouse.
Viol tried to grab the damned bird, but couldn't manage to get a solid grip. Meanwhile, the feathered demon clawed his face with his talons, beat him with its deceptively strong wings, and tried to peck his eyes out. He held up his hands to his eyes, and that's probably why he didn't see whatever hit him on the back of the head. He fell over, and then fell unconscious.
...
Miles Edgeworth surveyed his fellow prosecutors, still holding the rifle. Blackquill recalled the hawk back to his arm, and began petting it and cooing softly. Franziska was coiling her whip, checking for tears in the leather. Klavier was doing the same to his guitar, making sure it didn't have any blood on it from when he knocked out the perpetrator with it.
The door burst open, and Detective Gumshoe catapulted into the room.
"ARE YOU OKAY, PAL!?" He shouted to the room at large, but in Edgeworth's general direction.
"We are all fine, Detective, except for our suspect here. And perhaps Klavier's guitar."
Said teen law-slash-rock-and-roll prodigy looked up from the corner where he had settled.
"Nein, Herr Edgeworth; it is a Fender instrument. They are indestructible. See? It is even back in tune!" He plucked at his, admittedly still pristine-looking, guitar and produced the faint strains of his theme song.
"I think I will write a new song about this," he mused. He strummed a few more chords, this time unfamiliar, and nodded. He got a pencil and a paper, and started scrubbing away.
Detective Gumshoe, who was cuffing the suspect efficiently enough, looked up again.
"How'd you get him, pal?" He asked.
Edgeworth shook his head, and then looked to Franziska and Blackqill.
Simon was feeding Taka pieces of his lunch, like he had been before the maniac walked in shooting. He was softly petting his companion, and checking the animal over for injuries, no doubt. Franziska was re-checking her whip, idly snapping lengths of it between her hands and muttering about foolish fools in their foolishness.
Gumshoe nodded.
"I think I got it, pal. You managed to overpower him with unique skill set. It's happened before."
At Edgeworth's look, he shrugged.
"It was before my time, pal, but I've heard someone tried to do this to Godot, er, Prosecutor Armando, and Prosecutor von Karma the elder. Godot threw his coffee at him, and von Karma hit him with his walking stick. The guy was in ICU for three months 'cause the coffee started to eat through 'is skin. The stuff dissolved the barrel of the gun, it did. We keep it in the evidence locker as an example of acid damage."
Gumshoe shook his head.
"Don't mess with prosecutors, I always say. They're scary. No offense to current company, 'f course."
A short glance at said current company showed that they actually looked rather pleased.
Heaven help Edgeworth.
Detective Gumshoe had finished securing the suspect to a stretcher the EMTs had brought in, and waved for them to take him out. As he followed, he glanced over his shoulder, but didn't say anything.
Klavier looked up from his scribbles. If you turned your head and squinted, they looked a bit like musical notes.
"I believe that I will entitle my song, 'The Hammer of Justice Will Smash You Flat.' Sounds good, do you think?"
Edgeworth sighed.
"I believe it conveys the message, Mr. Gavin. Now, barring anymore interruptions, could we please get back to work?"
