I blame the Squid.
----
---
For want of a hat
a Phoenix Wright fanfic
by Griever
---
In the quiet room, leather creaked. Chains clinked. And faint squeeks of rubber against the flooring sounded in time with the steady and deep breaths.
The repeated sounds of impact echoed against mostly bare walls.
When he'd first rented the apartment, he'd looked for location above all else. An important consideration, seeing as he'd never quite been able to find the time to get a driver's license - sometime always insisted on coming between him and getting even the least bit of actual study time on that in, not to mention the disaster that the one time he'd actually gone to take the tests had been. In an odd twist of irony, the particular apartment that seemed to fit his criteria best also came with separate parking garages on ground level, and he hadn't had the patience to argue about taking that out of the lease agreement.
At first, he'd wanted to use it as storage space - that is, before he realized he didn't really have enough stuff to even remotely fill the space, and pretty much every bit of that stuff was things that he'd have preferred to have on-hand at a moment's notice rather than needing to go down there and haul them out whenever.
The problem with being mildly obsessed with the job was that most of the bulk of his possessions consisted of copies of case files.
A possible use for the space only occurred to him only some time after.
The heavy bag swung back again, with the faint creak of leather and clinking of the chain it hung from.
No, he'd never considered himself a particularly health-conscious or athletic individual. It wasn't even because he felt the need to get some exercise in.
A right cross met it coming back, taped knuckles biting deep ...
Rather, he considered this a preventive measure.
Some, he'd heard, did extreme sports. Some got fast cars. Some ... though he had no idea how the hell that was supposed to help ... golfed.
Phoenix Wright boxed. Or no, not really boxed.
Boxing sort of implied that there was someone else on the other end, and a competition.
Him, he just wanted to have something to beat the stuffing out of for reasons of enlightened self-interest.
He had no idea if this was what it was like for others in his line of work, or even those on the opposite end - somehow, the concept of _Edgeworth_, of all people, frustrated to the point of hammering on the walls with his fist was an immensely amusing one - but he took some things seriously, and personally.
Jab. Straight.
Maybe too seriously, and too personally.
Sometimes blatant idiocy and willful blindness seemed intent on trying to sucker punch him into sheer, stupefied disbelief.
Sometimes it was more personal.
It made his fist clench and his knuckles itch.
Von Karma had tried him, Gant had infuriated him, and White ...
White was the direct reason he'd even gotten this bag, and why he'd worked himself down into a heap of sore muscle and aching bones the day after that trial's confusion.
Because if he hadn't ...
Jab. Straight. Upper.
... if he hadn't, the it would have been him on the defendant's stand _again_, in the following few days, pleading guilty to accusations of aggravated assault and murder.
Redd White deserved a particular place in Phoenix Wright's own personal hell, for reasons many and varied.
That the man had murdered his mentor, boss, and the woman Phoenix still had certain feelings for all in one person being perhaps the most important one.
One. Two. One. Two. Onetwoonetwoonetwoonetwo ...
That the fallout of that particular mess left him unable to look at Maya Fey, his boss' Mia's younger, and at the time very much still jailbait, sister, without thinking of Mia - or, for that matter, Mia's glorious cleavage - whether she was using that family spirit channeling technique or not being another.
Ironically, it was something his latest case dealt with as well - the Kurain Channeling Technique which changed the channeler's physical appearance into that of the spirit being channeled, not Mia's twins.
Even more ironically, it had Maya standing accused of murder yet again.
Seriously, one more time, and he was going to cuff that girl to him just to save himself the headache ... no, wait, bad idea. Bad idea.
The bag shot back after a particularly vicious haymaker.
Worse, since Maya was mostly out of reach, what with being detained on suspicions of murder and all, this time Mia's spirit was mostly advising him by virtue of being channeled by her cousin. Her eight year old cousin.
That was so massively wrong, he didn't want to even think about it.
Adding insult to injury, he had to deal with the next generation of Von Karma, with the familiar condescending and superior attitude in addition to a brand spanking new S&M fetish.
Jab. Jab. Straight.
Well, at least he had the case figured out. With any luck, he could wrap this up tomorrow without too much hassle ...
... yeah, right. As if it was ever that easy.
His conjecture and wild speculation made _sense_ ... proving it, on the other hand, would be tricky.
Oh well. Mia had as much as told him, way back when, that sometimes you needed to think 'crazy'.
A final straight drove into the 'face' of the imaginary Redd White who'd slowly started replacing the punching bag in his mind, and Phoenix groaned in exasperation before reaching for a towel.
_Think_ crazy?
Oh, he'd have no problem with that at all.
It was not giving in and starting to do it all the time that was the problem.
***
Done and done.
Some things could have gone smoother, but then, that was always the case. Still, the points had been driven home, the murdered was exposed, and ...
"Regardless, I believe one thing has been made crystal clear," said the judge.
"That the defendant, Miss Maya Fey, is innocent," Phoenix nodded, and let himself relax.
Troubles, trials and tribulations aside, there was nothing quite like this. The rush of successfully reconstructing a chain of events and exposing the truth ...
Keep your drugs. This sort of high, you can't touch.
"This is preposterous!"
... shouldn't be able to touch.
Franziska von Karma was somehow managing, however. He had no idea why she was so successful in her attempts, but it was somewhat like sand in a clockwork.
He could almost hear the gears grinding to a halt.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that, apparently, she was more concerned with her career than the fact that she's almost had an innocent convicted. Certainly, it had to do with who that innocent was.
Enough was enough.
Here was yet another idiot willing to damn someone simply for the sake of their own _ego_, and if she wouldn't rein that ego in ...
He slammed his hands against his stand's surface.
"I'm going to enjoy the news tonight, Ms. von Karma," the attorney grinned coldly. "How about you? After all, you said it yourself, if I recall. It's going to be broadcast all over the world ... you _defeat_, that is."
He missed the first one, but being ready for it meant he didn't as much as flinch and raised his arm in time to have the second blow wrap around his wrist ...
Apparently, the judge didn't have anything against the prosecution bringing a freaking _whip_ into the courtroom ... but that was alright. If he was so willing to allow this sort of farce, Phoenix wouldn't really object.
Instead, he'd just do _this_.
With his face blank, Phoenix set himself and yanked ...
*THUD*
... pulling the prosecutor over the top of her stand's front, to land in a heap on the courtroom floor.
There was stunned silence.
"You Honor," the defense attorney broke it. "As it seems that Ms. von Karma is quite beside herself, I suggest we take a ten minute recess before we wrap these proceedings up."
Whereupon he yanked the handle of the whip from the prone prosecutor's hand, turned on his heel, and ...
"Mr. Wright! That would be quite enough ...*g-gulp*" the judge started, before being frozen by a glare.
"Really? If I recall correctly, this court has seen everything from slander, through death threats, to the most recent armed _assault_ from the prosecution," Phoenix ground out, in what he'd termed his Manfred von Karma tone. "Now hit. That. Gavel. Already."
"V... very well, I suppose this does call for a brief recess to let tempers cool," the judge gulped.
Phoenix turned away, still frowning, and stormed for the defendants' lobby ...
"Wright! Mr. Phoenix Wright, you foolishly foolish fool! You will return that this instant, and then you will pay, do you hear me?!" Apparently, Franziska von Karma recovered quickly, regaining her feet and stomping towards the lounge with her hands clenched and shaking.
The door to the defendants' lounge was yanked open, then slammed shut.
There were the sounds of ... something, that soon resolved into apparently spirited and blistering swearing - the words themselves muffled and made intelligible by the heavy doors, but the intent in the tone unmistakable.
Ten minutes later, and nobody had as much moved from their seats, nor had the muffled noise abated any in the interim before suddenly stopping.
The door opened, and Phoenix Wright, still holding the rolled up whip - though in his left hand and obviously clenching and un-clenching his right - walked out, his expression calm.
"Phoenix?" Mia Fey, currently possessing her cousin Pearl Fey, said as he stepped behind the defendants' stand. "What did you ...?"
The rest was interrupted by the door opening again and Franziska von Karma stepping out, walking noticeably slower than usual, face red ...
"You didn't ..." Mia started.
... and one hand gingerly rubbing at the back of her pants.
"Mister Wright, i-is the defense ready?" The judge asked.
"Yes, Your Honor."
"Miss von Karma, is the prosecution calmed down?"
"... yes, Your Honor ..." came the unusually subdued reply.
"Very well, then," continued the judge. "In light of the evidence presented here today, in the case of the murder of Dr. Turner Grey, I pronounce the defendant Not Guilty!"
"... you _did_ ..." Mia said, her voice somewhere between shock and amusement. "I never knew you had it in you."
"Sorry ... it's just, something about the woman just drives me up the wall," Phoenix replied, after the furor that came in the wake of the verdict's announcement had died down. "But if she insist on acting like a brat, I'm going to treat her like one and turn her over my knee."
Mia chuckled. "Are you going to keep that, then?"
The blue-suited man frowned, then looked to the whip still in his left hand. "Well, to the victor go the spoils, I guess."
"We'll just have to start calling you Indiana Wright."
"Nah. My hair wouldn't agree with a hat."
The banter continued as they proceeded out of the courtroom, not noticing the intent gaze one particular persecutor had fixed Phoenix with even as she continued to massage her deliciously-sore rear.
***
END for want of a hat
***
----
Because there are some times during the games when you really _want_ an option of saying "Are you going to stop being a moron or should I go over there and slap a bitch?" where some of the characters and their behavior is concerned.
Because this concept makes me grin like a loon.
Because there's not nearly enough PW fanfic out there, and certainly not enough good PW fanfic (point me out some links, yo).
And because Phoenix/Franziska and Phoenix/Mia both have crackalicious qualities in the extreme when not take too seriously.
-Griever
----
---
For want of a hat
a Phoenix Wright fanfic
by Griever
---
In the quiet room, leather creaked. Chains clinked. And faint squeeks of rubber against the flooring sounded in time with the steady and deep breaths.
The repeated sounds of impact echoed against mostly bare walls.
When he'd first rented the apartment, he'd looked for location above all else. An important consideration, seeing as he'd never quite been able to find the time to get a driver's license - sometime always insisted on coming between him and getting even the least bit of actual study time on that in, not to mention the disaster that the one time he'd actually gone to take the tests had been. In an odd twist of irony, the particular apartment that seemed to fit his criteria best also came with separate parking garages on ground level, and he hadn't had the patience to argue about taking that out of the lease agreement.
At first, he'd wanted to use it as storage space - that is, before he realized he didn't really have enough stuff to even remotely fill the space, and pretty much every bit of that stuff was things that he'd have preferred to have on-hand at a moment's notice rather than needing to go down there and haul them out whenever.
The problem with being mildly obsessed with the job was that most of the bulk of his possessions consisted of copies of case files.
A possible use for the space only occurred to him only some time after.
The heavy bag swung back again, with the faint creak of leather and clinking of the chain it hung from.
No, he'd never considered himself a particularly health-conscious or athletic individual. It wasn't even because he felt the need to get some exercise in.
A right cross met it coming back, taped knuckles biting deep ...
Rather, he considered this a preventive measure.
Some, he'd heard, did extreme sports. Some got fast cars. Some ... though he had no idea how the hell that was supposed to help ... golfed.
Phoenix Wright boxed. Or no, not really boxed.
Boxing sort of implied that there was someone else on the other end, and a competition.
Him, he just wanted to have something to beat the stuffing out of for reasons of enlightened self-interest.
He had no idea if this was what it was like for others in his line of work, or even those on the opposite end - somehow, the concept of _Edgeworth_, of all people, frustrated to the point of hammering on the walls with his fist was an immensely amusing one - but he took some things seriously, and personally.
Jab. Straight.
Maybe too seriously, and too personally.
Sometimes blatant idiocy and willful blindness seemed intent on trying to sucker punch him into sheer, stupefied disbelief.
Sometimes it was more personal.
It made his fist clench and his knuckles itch.
Von Karma had tried him, Gant had infuriated him, and White ...
White was the direct reason he'd even gotten this bag, and why he'd worked himself down into a heap of sore muscle and aching bones the day after that trial's confusion.
Because if he hadn't ...
Jab. Straight. Upper.
... if he hadn't, the it would have been him on the defendant's stand _again_, in the following few days, pleading guilty to accusations of aggravated assault and murder.
Redd White deserved a particular place in Phoenix Wright's own personal hell, for reasons many and varied.
That the man had murdered his mentor, boss, and the woman Phoenix still had certain feelings for all in one person being perhaps the most important one.
One. Two. One. Two. Onetwoonetwoonetwoonetwo ...
That the fallout of that particular mess left him unable to look at Maya Fey, his boss' Mia's younger, and at the time very much still jailbait, sister, without thinking of Mia - or, for that matter, Mia's glorious cleavage - whether she was using that family spirit channeling technique or not being another.
Ironically, it was something his latest case dealt with as well - the Kurain Channeling Technique which changed the channeler's physical appearance into that of the spirit being channeled, not Mia's twins.
Even more ironically, it had Maya standing accused of murder yet again.
Seriously, one more time, and he was going to cuff that girl to him just to save himself the headache ... no, wait, bad idea. Bad idea.
The bag shot back after a particularly vicious haymaker.
Worse, since Maya was mostly out of reach, what with being detained on suspicions of murder and all, this time Mia's spirit was mostly advising him by virtue of being channeled by her cousin. Her eight year old cousin.
That was so massively wrong, he didn't want to even think about it.
Adding insult to injury, he had to deal with the next generation of Von Karma, with the familiar condescending and superior attitude in addition to a brand spanking new S&M fetish.
Jab. Jab. Straight.
Well, at least he had the case figured out. With any luck, he could wrap this up tomorrow without too much hassle ...
... yeah, right. As if it was ever that easy.
His conjecture and wild speculation made _sense_ ... proving it, on the other hand, would be tricky.
Oh well. Mia had as much as told him, way back when, that sometimes you needed to think 'crazy'.
A final straight drove into the 'face' of the imaginary Redd White who'd slowly started replacing the punching bag in his mind, and Phoenix groaned in exasperation before reaching for a towel.
_Think_ crazy?
Oh, he'd have no problem with that at all.
It was not giving in and starting to do it all the time that was the problem.
***
Done and done.
Some things could have gone smoother, but then, that was always the case. Still, the points had been driven home, the murdered was exposed, and ...
"Regardless, I believe one thing has been made crystal clear," said the judge.
"That the defendant, Miss Maya Fey, is innocent," Phoenix nodded, and let himself relax.
Troubles, trials and tribulations aside, there was nothing quite like this. The rush of successfully reconstructing a chain of events and exposing the truth ...
Keep your drugs. This sort of high, you can't touch.
"This is preposterous!"
... shouldn't be able to touch.
Franziska von Karma was somehow managing, however. He had no idea why she was so successful in her attempts, but it was somewhat like sand in a clockwork.
He could almost hear the gears grinding to a halt.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that, apparently, she was more concerned with her career than the fact that she's almost had an innocent convicted. Certainly, it had to do with who that innocent was.
Enough was enough.
Here was yet another idiot willing to damn someone simply for the sake of their own _ego_, and if she wouldn't rein that ego in ...
He slammed his hands against his stand's surface.
"I'm going to enjoy the news tonight, Ms. von Karma," the attorney grinned coldly. "How about you? After all, you said it yourself, if I recall. It's going to be broadcast all over the world ... you _defeat_, that is."
He missed the first one, but being ready for it meant he didn't as much as flinch and raised his arm in time to have the second blow wrap around his wrist ...
Apparently, the judge didn't have anything against the prosecution bringing a freaking _whip_ into the courtroom ... but that was alright. If he was so willing to allow this sort of farce, Phoenix wouldn't really object.
Instead, he'd just do _this_.
With his face blank, Phoenix set himself and yanked ...
*THUD*
... pulling the prosecutor over the top of her stand's front, to land in a heap on the courtroom floor.
There was stunned silence.
"You Honor," the defense attorney broke it. "As it seems that Ms. von Karma is quite beside herself, I suggest we take a ten minute recess before we wrap these proceedings up."
Whereupon he yanked the handle of the whip from the prone prosecutor's hand, turned on his heel, and ...
"Mr. Wright! That would be quite enough ...*g-gulp*" the judge started, before being frozen by a glare.
"Really? If I recall correctly, this court has seen everything from slander, through death threats, to the most recent armed _assault_ from the prosecution," Phoenix ground out, in what he'd termed his Manfred von Karma tone. "Now hit. That. Gavel. Already."
"V... very well, I suppose this does call for a brief recess to let tempers cool," the judge gulped.
Phoenix turned away, still frowning, and stormed for the defendants' lobby ...
"Wright! Mr. Phoenix Wright, you foolishly foolish fool! You will return that this instant, and then you will pay, do you hear me?!" Apparently, Franziska von Karma recovered quickly, regaining her feet and stomping towards the lounge with her hands clenched and shaking.
The door to the defendants' lounge was yanked open, then slammed shut.
There were the sounds of ... something, that soon resolved into apparently spirited and blistering swearing - the words themselves muffled and made intelligible by the heavy doors, but the intent in the tone unmistakable.
Ten minutes later, and nobody had as much moved from their seats, nor had the muffled noise abated any in the interim before suddenly stopping.
The door opened, and Phoenix Wright, still holding the rolled up whip - though in his left hand and obviously clenching and un-clenching his right - walked out, his expression calm.
"Phoenix?" Mia Fey, currently possessing her cousin Pearl Fey, said as he stepped behind the defendants' stand. "What did you ...?"
The rest was interrupted by the door opening again and Franziska von Karma stepping out, walking noticeably slower than usual, face red ...
"You didn't ..." Mia started.
... and one hand gingerly rubbing at the back of her pants.
"Mister Wright, i-is the defense ready?" The judge asked.
"Yes, Your Honor."
"Miss von Karma, is the prosecution calmed down?"
"... yes, Your Honor ..." came the unusually subdued reply.
"Very well, then," continued the judge. "In light of the evidence presented here today, in the case of the murder of Dr. Turner Grey, I pronounce the defendant Not Guilty!"
"... you _did_ ..." Mia said, her voice somewhere between shock and amusement. "I never knew you had it in you."
"Sorry ... it's just, something about the woman just drives me up the wall," Phoenix replied, after the furor that came in the wake of the verdict's announcement had died down. "But if she insist on acting like a brat, I'm going to treat her like one and turn her over my knee."
Mia chuckled. "Are you going to keep that, then?"
The blue-suited man frowned, then looked to the whip still in his left hand. "Well, to the victor go the spoils, I guess."
"We'll just have to start calling you Indiana Wright."
"Nah. My hair wouldn't agree with a hat."
The banter continued as they proceeded out of the courtroom, not noticing the intent gaze one particular persecutor had fixed Phoenix with even as she continued to massage her deliciously-sore rear.
***
END for want of a hat
***
----
Because there are some times during the games when you really _want_ an option of saying "Are you going to stop being a moron or should I go over there and slap a bitch?" where some of the characters and their behavior is concerned.
Because this concept makes me grin like a loon.
Because there's not nearly enough PW fanfic out there, and certainly not enough good PW fanfic (point me out some links, yo).
And because Phoenix/Franziska and Phoenix/Mia both have crackalicious qualities in the extreme when not take too seriously.
-Griever
