Chapter Text
How to not get tangled up with snooty aristocrats, a completely trustable, accurate, definitely working guide by Apollo Justice.
Step 1: Don’t get tangled up with snooty aristocrats. Duh.
Step 2: Triple-check if your boss is affiliated to, you don’t suppose, an underground ring of vigilante thieves.
Step 3: Repeat until successful.
…Yeah, Apollo may have fucked up that last bit.
It’s a normal afternoon, as normal as one goes. Apollo’s just finished scrubbing the already clean counter, thank you very much, for what he thinks is the fifty-second time in two hours. (In his defense, he’s bored out of his skull.)
A sugar-buzzed, duster-wielding girl with a top hat walks in, and he doesn’t even blink.
“Trucy,” he nods, attempting to wipe off what he will find out later is not indeed a stain.
“Hi, Polly!” she beams, tipping her hat and hopping onto the table. “Whatcha doing there?”
“Oh, you know, just my usual routine of pain. Suffering. Et cetera.”
“You’re so,” Trucy places a finger on her chin, trying to think of an apt word to capture Apollo’s sadness, “uh, you’re so grumpy, you know? Try cheering up a little!”
“How about you scooch over a little instead so I can clean up the last of this, hm?” Apollo cracks a small smile, batting at the young girl with his rag. Trucy obliges, carefully inching off the table as Apollo scrubs at it meticulously.
The doorbell jingles, and Apollo looks up from his work.
“Welcome to Catpuccino, the one and only cat cafe in Los To- oh,” he stops mid-sentence, noting two things: one, the customer has earphones in, and thus as a result can hear none of what Apollo’s saying, and two, the customer is probably not a customer.
Wi-fi hoggers, he curses silently, watching the oddly-dressed man walk over to a table and pull out a sleek laptop. Always here for the free network.
Now that he’s taking a closer look, the visitor seems rather out of place. Decked up in a periwinkle three-piece suit, with his blond hair tied up in a twist and a flower pinned to his lapel, he sticks out of the Los Tokyo crowd noticeably.
Mumbling something into his earpiece, the man stands up, making his way over to the counter. From the corner of his eye, Apollo can barely make out Trucy twitching subtly, but he doesn’t think much of it. After all, it’s not a regular occurrence to watch a purple-suited man walk into a cat cafe, which, come to think of it, sounds like the beginning of a bad joke to Apollo.
Violet eyes give Apollo a once-over, and he swears he did not feel a shiver run down his spine.
“One black coffee, please,” the man inspects his nails, speaking with a hint of a German accent.
“Coming right up!” Trucy tilts her head to the side, her smile wearing a little too thin. “Apollo, let’s get it ready, hm?”
Whatever, Apollo figures, following in Trucy’s steps. Nothing can go wrong, right?
As he finds out, absolutely everything can go wrong in the record time of two minutes. (And eleven seconds, but no one’s really counting.)
Trucy hands the man - Kristoph, Apollo figures from his ID hung around his neck - his coffee, collecting the change and thanking him. As soon as the door closes, Trucy flips the sign to ‘Closed’, pulling the curtains down and dragging Apollo by the hand.
“Trucy, I-” he stutters, failing to keep his balance, “what’s going on?”
“Daddy will explain!” she huffs, yanking him. “Come on, follow me!”
Another lovely thing he forgot to mention: Trucy Wright is his manager’s daughter.
Phoenix Wright, the aforementioned manager, is a rather… eccentric person, to put it nicely. To put it not so nicely, however, Apollo suspects he’s lost his marbles. Gone cuckoo. Absolute stark raving mad. Cray-cray. Whatever.
Trucy all but kicks down the door, and Apollo winces at the sound of heeled boots clacking against oak wood.
“Daddy,” she wheezes, out of breath. “Gavin showed up earlier.”
“Oh, so he did,” Phoenix looks up from a mug of tea.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Apollo crosses his arms in front of him defensively. “What’s going on? Who’s Gavin? Isn’t that man’s name Kristoph? Are you in some sort of trouble?”
“I’ll explain everything in due time,” Phoenix promises, a wry smile on his lips. “For now, Justice, can you keep a secret?”