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It is six in the goddamn morning and Apollo either wants to punch someone or go directly back to bed, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars in Monopoly money, do not do anything else but sleep. Unfortunately, sleeping is absolutely not an option because he’d have to bike all the way back and then Clay would point and laugh and he’d deserve it.
Even more unfortunately, punching someone is also absolutely not an option. The only potentially punchable someones here are Phoenix Wright, unrepentant bastard, and his daughter Trucy Wright, unrepentant bastard junior. If he punched Mr. Wright in the face again, Mr. Wright would probably give him pointers again, and what tattered fragments of Apollo’s sanity survived law school wouldn’t survive that.
And honestly, Apollo would just feel bad if he punched Trucy. And also Mr. Wright probably would actually get mad then and considering that the one singular time Apollo has seen him get genuinely angry was at Kristoph Gavin, who is currently in prison for the murder he’d tried to pin on Mr. Wright…
...yeah, no, if he’s punching anyone he’s punching Mr. Wright, and he’s not punching Mr. Wright because he is not dealing with the man’s cryptic bullshit at six in the goddamn morning.
Apollo rubs his eyes, resigns himself to his fate, and asks the million-dollar question: “What’s the emergency this time?”
“Um,” Trucy says. She looks to her daddy.
“Funny story.” Mr. Wright at least has the good grace to look sheepish when he shrugs helplessly. “Truce, how do we explain this.”
“The truth is a good place to start,” Apollo offers entirely unhelpfully. “Do you actually need my help for an emergency emergency or is this another I got hit by a car and need you to run a bunch of errands emergency?”
The concerning thing is that both the Wrights present seem to seriously consider this. Goddammit. Like father, like daughter, Apollo doesn’t fucking buy it for an instant.
“Daddy’s not in the hospital this time?” Trucy grins nervously, tucking her hands behind her back and bouncing a little on her feet.
“Yet,” Mr. Wright says, which does not help as much as he clearly thinks he does. He thinks about this and adds, “I could be though.”
“Daddy, no!”
“Mr. Wright, no,” Apollo realizes too late he’s said it at the exact same time as Trucy, and groans. “Just… what do you need me to do.”
Mr. Wright gestures vaguely at the box he’s sitting on, getting up off it as he does. “Box.” Then he points up at a ceiling tile moved off to the side, and the dark mystery of what’s above it. “Attic.”
Apollo stares, for a long while. Then his mouth falls open and he stares some more. He’s pretty sure his spikes just started drooping and to be completely honest he doesn’t even care.
“So let me get this straight,” Apollo says slowly. He really should have stopped for coffee at least on the way here. Mr. Wright’s lip twitches on the word straight. He looks very much like he wants to say something but, for once, he holds his fucking tongue and for that little Apollo is grateful.
“You called me here,” he continues, “at six in the fucking morning… ”
“Language,” Mr. Wright says automatically.
Trucy groans. “Daddy, I know what the fuck word means.”
“...logically, I know this, but emotionally I am going to pretend I never heard that, thanks, or I will start crying right here and right now.”
Apollo clears his throat. “At six in the morning, to move one. Singular. Box.”
“Well…”
“Yeah, that’s about it,” Trucy chirps.
“I am actually going to lose my mind,” Apollo decides. “Is there a wall I can bang my head against handy?”
“Bathroom wall next to the toilet!”
“Cool, thanks…”
“In all fairness, Apollo, before you give yourself a concussion,” Mr. Wright says in the tone that Apollo has mentally dubbed the condescending, vaguely disappointed dad voice, “we were expecting you to be asleep and get our message when you woke up later. It isn’t really that time sensitive.”
Well, that explains the surprise when he’d actually picked up. Apollo glares at him and says, “Your call woke me up.”
“Ah.” He has the decency to look sheepish. “Sorry.”
“Wait, Polly, you don’t have any kind of do not disturb setting?” Trucy frowns. “I know Daddy doesn’t because his phone is a brick but come on, he has an excuse, he’s old.”
Mr. Wright groans and plops backwards onto the couch, draping a forearm across his face dramatically. “You complain about your back one time too many and you’re never young again, I swear. Kids these days.”
“Auntie Maya says you were always old even when you weren’t really old.”
“Is this revenge for not ever really getting into the Steel Samurai with you two?”
Trucy shrugs. “That and something about a stepladder.”
Apollo is absolutely not going to ask— Mr. Wright has a sister named Maya? —but he is going to point out, “Using the phrase kids these days automatically makes you seem older, Mr. Wright.”
Mr. Wright groans louder. “You calling me Mr. Wright makes me feel older, Apollo.”
He does not try very hard to hide the word “Good” in a fit of coughing. He does, however, eventually ask, “So why do you need me to lift a box?”
“I’m too short and Daddy’s got a bad back,” Trucy says matter-of-factly.
“And I’m not that much taller than you,” Apollo fires back.
This does not bother Trucy in the slightest. “We’ve got a stepladder somewhere, I’ll go find it for you!” And with that, all four feet eleven inches of Trucy Wright barrel off into the back somewhere, leaving a practicing attorney and a disbarred one.
“You’ve got a bad back,” Apollo’s words are directed toward Mr. Wright this time. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
Mr. Wright shrugs. He tucks his hands behind his head with one of those smiles that could mean anything in the world but actual genuine happiness. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe you do. The story is fairly amusing, in retrospect, and more than a little embarrassing for me.”
Well, that settles it. “Sure, let’s hear it.”
“Oooh, let’s hear what?” Trucy’s lugging a ladder out of one of the back rooms. She sets it down behind the couch and hops up onto the arm of it expectantly. “Are you telling Polly about the time you—”
“The boat, yeah,” Mr. Wright says.
“The boat?” Apollo repeats, incredulous. “What did you do?”
“I’m getting to that!”
“The boat, the boat…” Trucy taps her chin thoughtfully. “Oh! I remember that one. That’s nearly as good.”
Apollo stares. “Nearly as good as what?”
“Well, there was the time Daddy fell off a bridge, and the time he got locked in a walk-in restaurant freezer, and—”
“Technically I fell through the bridge when it collapsed under the stress of being on fire, and you make it sound like getting locked in the freezer was my idea.” Mr. Wright somehow manages to keep a straight face even as he clarifies, “It really, really wasn’t.”
“You fell through a bridge?” Apollo isn’t sure if he wants his bracelet to be reacting to this or not. But it’s not, which means Mr. Wright must be telling the truth, or at least not explicitly lying. “I have a few questions.”
“And I have a few answers, but you wanted to know how I wrecked my back.”
“He lifted an entire boat!” Trucy says proudly.
“I’m sorry, you did what?” Apollo blurts.
“It wasn’t an entire boat, more like half of it,” Mr. Wright deflects. “Besides, Truce, he needs context.”
Apollo really isn’t sure how much this fabled context will actually help, but he decides to take a seat on the opposite couch anyway, after moving what appear to be a few alternate stage costumes for Trucy gingerly over to the side. “Context away. I’m sitting down.”
“So you are.” The man, the (former) myth, the (no longer) legend clears his throat. “Well, I’m still in touch with a few old friends from my days in law. Couple detectives here, couple prosecutors there—”
“Oh, like Detective Skye?” Trucy cuts in. “You never did tell me the whole story of how you two know each other.”
“Defended her sister for murder, the full story can wait for another time, but yes, her too. It’s… hey, Apollo? Word of advice. Don’t ever get yourself disbarred, first off, but if you do it’s a great opportunity to find out who your real friends are.”
Apollo nods. “I promise you I have never once planned to get disbarred, Mr. Wright.”
“It’s not something you plan on. Just… be careful. Or at least more careful than me. Anyway, the vast majority of people I’d thought were friends or at least good acquaintances turned out to want absolutely nothing to do with the Forgin’ Attorney, quite understandably. But a few people didn’t care about that. Like an old friend of mine, a prosecutor working in Europe.”
“Uncle Miles!” Trucy says cheerfully. “Wait, where was I in this? Was this before or after the freezer thing?”
“After, his sister was keeping an eye on you again.”
Trucy nods sagely. “Auntie Franziska, got it… oh yeah, how long now until I can use a whip in my shows?”
“Answer isn’t going to change, Trucy.” Mr. Wright buries his head in his hands. “Eighteen. Please. ”
“I feel like I’m missing… a bit of context here,” Apollo says slowly. “But you’ve got an old friend, a prosecutor working in Europe named Miles?”
Somewhere that name rings a bell, but it’s too damn early in the morning still for Apollo to try seriously at figuring out why it rings a bell. He might regret this later but that is a problem for a less sleepy, more caffeinated Apollo, and it is also a problem for later .
“Sure do. He flies us out there every now and then, when he’s dealing with a particularly tricky case of his own.” Mr. Wright shrugs. “Have to say, I prefer the defense side of the courtroom, but I don’t mind helping out an old friend. Particularly not if he’s prosecuting the right culprit from the start, which he’s gotten a lot better at doing.”
“Right…”
“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” says both Trucy and Mr. Wright at the same time. They look at each other, grin, and high-five across the couch.
“Very funny. I’m laughing so hard. Ha. Ha. Ha.” Apollo’s expression is a completely deadpan one. “What does this have to do with a boat?”
“Well, the boat was the scene of a murder,” Mr. Wright says, a tad more dramatically than is really necessary. “I don’t remember all the details of the actual case—heck, I wasn’t told all the details of the actual case—but the boat was left on the beach where the murder was discovered, so as to avoid tampering with the crime scene, nobody moved it. First day of trial came and went, Miles and I went back to go investigate further…”
“And the boat was gone!” With a swirl of her cape, Trucy too has disappeared without a trace, though the muffled thump from behind the couch and equally muffled giggles make it pretty clear where she’s gone.
“Mr. Wright, boats don’t just disappear without reason.” Apollo squints at him blearily. He really does need more coffee for this. Or literally any coffee for this. “Do you have like… literally any caffeine anywhere in here?”
Mr. Wright gestures vaguely at a coffee maker plugged into the wall. “Supplies are in the cut-people-in-half-cabinet. Knock yourself out, kid.”
“Cool, thanks.” Apollo gets out two mugs—he makes it three after a gloved hand waves him down from behind the couch, and then gives him an approving thumbs-up—and gets to work. “So… why did the boat disappear?”
“It was close to high tide when the murder was discovered. With all the buzz around that, someone would have noticed if the boat had started slipping into the water. My guess is that at the next high tide, in the middle of the night, was when it went all the way. Needless to say, we really needed to find that boat. It didn’t take as long as it could have, thankfully—the current along the beach mostly went one way and the boat’s sail was visible from a pretty big distance.”
“It was a sailboat?”
“Sure was. And we found it on pretty much the last beach before the open ocean, and—well, it was getting closer and closer to high tide. Miles wanted to call someone to lift it out but I was like, hey, we’re here, I work out sometimes, I can totally lift that boat high enough that it doesn’t drift out to sea again.” Mr. Wright grins sheepishly. “And that’s how I wrecked my back.”
“I really wish you were lying,” Apollo decides. He picks up a mug with the Blue Badger on it and passes it over to Mr. Wright.
“But both of you know I’m not… oh, thanks Apollo.”
Apollo just nods. “Trucy, does your daddy just… do dumb stuff like this all the time?”
“Hey! I resent that remark!”
“Not all the time.” Trucy grins. “I heard he did stuff like this a lot more often in his lawyer days.”
“You’re not wrong, but also, I told you my story, you know why my back’s all wrecked, can we talk about literally anything else?”
“Okay,” Apollo says, mainly because he’s genuinely curious about something else. He takes a sip of his own coffee. “So… why does all your coffee say Godot Blend on it? I’ve never heard of that brand.”
“Ah. That.” Mr. Wright shrugs. “That’s from another old friend, sort of, or at least I don’t think he hated me by the end? He pretty much insisted I take his coffee blends, since he couldn’t take them where he was going. It’s been… what, eight years? Still not anywhere close to running out. Man really loved his coffee, that’s for sure.”
“Loved… oh. I’m sorry.”
Mr. Wright looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “He’s not dead, I think. Just in prison for murder.”
“What? Was he a defendant of yours, or…?”
“Prosecutor, once. I don’t think he ever really liked me very much.” Mr. Wright shrugs, and takes a sip of his coffee. “Honestly I was half-expecting his stash to be poisoned or something, but hey, I’m not dead yet. Maybe he genuinely felt bad for throwing coffee at me in court.”
“What,” Apollo blurts.
More surprising is Trucy popping back up from behind the couch, mug in hand, to go, “Daddy! You never told me about that!”
Mr. Wright shrugs. “Prosecutors can get away with anything. Remember that, Apollo.”
“...cool.” Apollo tries to imagine a prosecutor throwing coffee across a courtroom. The resulting mental image looks a lot like Prosecutor Gavin and plays the air guitar while imaginary Apollo frantically tries to wipe off the coffee.
“Anyway, if I’m getting into that story, can you at least move our box first?”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks for the coffee. Where did you say the ladder was…?”
“Oh!” Trucy lights up. “Stepladder’s over there where I left it.”
“That’s… just a regular ladder, Trucy.”
“No, no, that’s definitely a stepladder,” Mr. Wright says. “It’s a ladder, that you step on, so it’s a step ladder.”
Apollo sets the ladder down under the removed floor tile. He picks up the box, steps up on the ladder, and carefully shoves it up into the attic. Then, and only then, does he say, “Okay, but you said it yourself: it’s still a ladder.”
“Yes, it is. But, a stepladder is by definition a more specific kind of ladder, and isn’t it better to use the more specific term when you’ve got one?”
“Sir, with all due respect, it is literally just a ladder.”
When Apollo gets back to his apartment a few hours later, the only explanation he gives his roommate before retreating to his room and attempting to pass out—or at least, the only explanation Clay is able to decipher from his exhausted mumbling—is something about boats, coffee, and how wrong the Wrights collectively are about ladders.