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“Nick…” Maya whispered under her breath. Her trembling wide eyes were fixated on an amorphous blue and beige blob with two large voids where one would usually expect eyes to be. They were standing about ten feet away from the thing, on a bridge over the river that was central to the city. It was a warm day, with a comfortable, seaside-like breeze and the light blue of the sky broken up with a few dotted clouds.
Despite the pleasant weather, the only thing Maya felt right now was a pool of fear gathering deep down in her gut. She shuffled closer to Phoenix, her sandals clacking as she did so, and clutched onto his sleeve with shaking hands.
“That thing’s so creepy.”
“I know how you feel.” Phoenix nodded. He stared into the voids and muttered “It’s so soulless, if it died, you wouldn’t be able to channel it.”
“Stop it.” Maya had never sounded so serious. “I don’t want to think about that thing being alive, let alone having a soul.”
“Look. It wasn’t my decision to come here, okay? If I could be back at the office right now, I would be.” He hunched over and groaned.
“Whatcha doing, you two?”
Trucy sprang up between them. Her hair and earrings bounced with her as she did so.
“Why’d you stop walking? We gotta get inside for the show!” A sparkle of excitement glimmered in her eyes.
“R-right…” Maya couldn’t even feign excitement at the idea.
“Aunt Maya!” Trucy brought her hands to her mouth. “Are you… a scaredy cat?”
“No!” Maya started going red and puffed up her cheeks. “It’s just… that.”
“What??? That’s just the Proto Badger! Nothing to get scared over! Gee…” Trucy pressed her finger to her chin in thought. “I thought adults were supposed to be braver than us kids.”
“Maya? An adult?” Phoenix raised his eyebrows, then shook his head. “Nope. Just doesn’t sound right.”
“Hey!”
“Mr. Nick!” Pearls rushed over and frowned fiercely. “You can’t be scared! You need to be a strong knight, in shining armor! Come, we must sally forth!”
She did a terrible impression of a character from an old movie Phoenix had shown her at their last movie night. He cringed at the misremembered quote.
“That’s not— oh, whatever. I can’t stand standing here any longer. Let’s go, then at least we won’t have those creepy eyes watching us.” He sighed and started marching at speed towards the park.
The group walked past the sign broadcasting “Gatewater Land”, lit up by enough lightbulbs of so many colors it put a Christmas tree to shame.
“Nick… Did it look familiar to you?” Maya asked, whispering in his ear again as they walked.
“Now that you mention it… maybe a little?”
“Why am I being dragged back to this wretched place? Didn’t enough cursed things happen last time we came here?” Miles’ eyes were practically bulging out of his head. Kay ran in front of him, enjoying the wind rushing through her hair.
“They’re unveiling a new badger! You’ve got to see this. And besides, you stay in your office too much.”
“I don’t know what gave you the impression that I have anything but contempt for these ‘badger’ creatures. …But, you were bouncing off the walls so much in my office that you would have broken something had you continued, so… I suppose it’s for the best.”
“That’s the spirit!” She threw a fist into the air. “Now, come on, slowpoke!”
Miles felt a shiver down his spine as they approached the now-renovated Haunted House. It could dress up in whatever costume it liked— it still housed the same horrific memories for him.
Kay swung the doors open with gusto. Miles entered cautiously behind her.
“So… When is this ‘show’ you were so excited for starting?”
“I don’t know!”
“What do you mean ‘I don’t know’?”
Kay stopped in her tracks and put a finger to her mouth to help her think.
“It just said to come here today. They must be running shows regularly. That’s what the Badgers normally do, you know!”
“It?”
Miles couldn’t question her any further. In the darkened corridor they were currently passing through, they suddenly heard something shift and a padded paw firmly gripped Miles’ arm. Kay heard a gasp behind her. By the time she looked back, he was already gone.
“Mr. Edgeworth? Mr. Edgeworth?”
Kay called. No answer. She thought her next best bet would be to check the end of the corridor. If there was a room trick somewhere, there had to be a door to enter it from another angle, right?
“These sprawling corridors are not helping my case of the heebie-jeebies.” Maya complained.
“And the walls don’t look very sturdy.” Phoenix prodded the faux-brick texture suspiciously. “I get the feeling it’s going to fall down on us at any moment.”
“Don’t you get it?” Trucy looked very pleased with herself. “I bet that’s the point! We get scared… and then nothing happens! Clever, don’t you think?”
“Yeah… somehow I doubt that, Truce.”
Phoenix looked down. Pearl had completely changed her tune and was now clutching at his trouser legs, shaking like a leaf.
“Mr. Nick… are the walls really going to fall down?”
“No…” Maya was determined to convince the others she was brave. “That sort of thing only happens in the movies. Look—“
She stepped forward a few paces and pressed on the wall in front of her.
“It’s not moving an inch!”
She looked back to see the others’ reaction. Instead, she saw a wall slide down from the ceiling, cutting them off from her completely.
“Nick? Pearly? Trucy? Are you there?”
Her chest heaved with worry. With panicked eyes, she looked in both directions. There had to be another way out of here, right?
“They’re fine. They’re on the side with the exit. If anything, they’re worried about you. Oh Mother, how am I going to get out of here?”
She reassured herself as she scanned the corridor. Just as she did, a girl skated into view.
“Woah! Who are you?”
“Argh!” The girl punched the air in annoyance. “I usually have a cool answer for that, but this isn’t the time. I’m the Great Thief Yatagarasu, but you can call me Kay.”
“Oh... Kay. Are you trying to get out of here, too?”
“Yeah! My friend got dragged away and I need to find him!”
“Wait— what do you mean dragged away?”
“I didn’t really see it all, but I heard something slide… and he was gone.”
Maya nodded as she processed this information.
“I hear you. A wall just slid down and cut me off from my friends.”
“Woah, what a coincidence! Do you think there’s some trick to this sort of thing that can get us out of here so we can find them?”
“There has to be, right?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling myself, too…” Kay trailed off, laughing nervously.
“I’m Maya, by the way.”
“Good to meet-ya, Maya. Now, is there some jutted-out brick we need to press that’ll open up the passageway out?” Kay began searching high and low, pressing her palm against the walls.
“I don’t think they’re real bricks, Kay.”
“What does that matter? We still need to get out!”
“Well, what about the sliding walls? Surely if we push hard enough, we can slide the walls to get out of here!”
“Good idea. Let’s try that!”
The girls devised a plan to lean against each wall with their body weight until one of them began to shift. Slowly, they were tipped upside down and fell into a different room altogether.
“Ow!”
“This room’s so dark. I can’t see anything!”
Almost as soon as Kay said this, a spark lit up the room.
“Is that…”
“Fire!” Kay called.
The ceiling collapsed, raining huge hunks of debris on top of them. After somehow surviving this, the two looked around. The spreading fire gave the room a little more visibility, allowing them to see the door on the other side.
“Quick, Maya! Onto this broken sofa!”
Kay held out her hand. Maya took it, and soon they were balancing on the arm of what looked like a sofa that should have been tossed out years ago.
“Where next?”
“There! That table! Then, that fridge!”
“Where did these things come from?” Maya shouted as she navigated the impromptu parkour course.
“I know, right?”
Maya climbed onto a table. Finally, she was on a ledge she could reach the door from. Kay made one last jump to join her… and slipped.
“Kay!”
Maya had caught her by the hand. There was no time for sighs of relief— they needed to get out of here, now! They scrambled through the door and burst into the next room.
Miles was up against the wall, his arms braced in a struggle against a large purple… thing.
“Mr. Edgeworth!” Maya and Kay called in unison. They then both looked at each other.
“Wait, you know Mr. Edgeworth?” Maya asked first.
“Yeah, how do you know him?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Yes, yes! Introductions can wait until we’re out of… whatever situation we’re in!” Miles splurted out while still trying to fight off the thing.
“Want some help?” Kay called out.
“God, yes!”
Kay and Maya 2-v-1’d the thing in the large purple suit, tackling it to the floor with significant force.
“There’s a fire in the next room! We need to get out of here, stat!” Maya told Miles, still exerting all her force on keeping it down.
“I was pulled through here, so this should come out near the exit. Let’s settle this in the fresh air. …Bring the thing with you, would you?” Miles held open the sliding door so the others could leave.
They nodded enthusiastically. This house had well outstayed its welcome.
“That was fun! I’ve never pinned someone down before!” Kay confidently crossed her arms.
“Maya!”
“Nick!”
Phoenix, Pearl and Trucy had caught sight of Maya. They launched at her, forming a massive group hug.
“Wright is here, too?” Miles glared at Maya.
“Oops, yeah, forgot to mention that.”
“Maya…” Phoenix looked at her sheepishly. His eyes darted between her and the thing. Her. The thing. Her The thing. “What’s that?”
“Oh! I’d like to know, too!”
Maya threw off the costume’s head, exposing the mastermind behind this for all to see. Miles reacted first.
“Is that…”
“That creepy bellboy from a few years ago?!” Phoenix interrupted.
“This has all been one big misunderstanding, sir. These costumes, they do not leave much room for the wearer to see out, see? Since the Gatewater has been doing splendidly recently, I only thought it sensible to show some of the people who doubted me how far I’ve come, sir. So, I created The Spooky Badger, sir!”
“So, you’re trying to terrorize your enemies with your new money? Yikes.” Maya winced.
“What in God’s green earth is wrong with you?!” Miles was fuming.
“What I want to know is how he got the walls to move.” Phoenix had his hand to his chin, entirely too zoned in on solving this conundrum to be angry. Well, that and he wasn’t the one trapped in the house in the first place.
“Oh, it had mirror walls the last time we came here.” Kay explained. “I guess with the renovations, they added more of the same, plus some sliding doors?”
“Never mind that! You can hardly call us your enemies! We barely know you!” Miles stared holes into the bellboy’s face.
“Oh, you see, sir, that’s where you’re mistaken, sir. I simply distributed the flyers where they’d be most likely to see them, their local bus stop and their local bar, sir.”
“So, I could have avoided all of this if I had just taken a different bus? That’s good to know.” Kay sighed, exasperated.
“Oh, and I saw it while performing my show at the Wonder Bar!” Trucy added.
“Now, if you’d excuse me, sir. My guests might be arriving any moment. I need to be able to greet them when they arrive.”
“Absolutely NOT. I’m calling the police.” Miles took out his phone.
“I, uh… don’t think they’re coming anyway.” Trucy spoke up, timidly. “I thought we could all go together, so I took home the flyer to show Daddy at our next movie night with Pearl and Aunt Maya. I don’t think anyone else saw it.”
“I wanted to be one of the only ones to go to an exclusive Badger event, so… uh, I stole the flyer from the post it was attached to.” Kay looked aside, expecting to be lectured about being selfish.
Miles was still busy talking with the police, so Phoenix smiled at Kay while patting Trucy on the back.
“You two… might have just saved someone’s life.”
“Saving someone’s life… how heroic.” Pearl sighed dreamily. “I thought you were going to be the knight in shining armor today, Mr. Nick! I was so wrong!”
“Uh… thanks?” He didn’t know how to respond.
“Hey, what about me?” Maya huffed. “Kay and I worked together to get out of there, and we saved Edgeworth!”
“Mystic Maya… you’ve always been my hero.”
“Pearly…”
Tears fell down Maya’s face. She squeezed Pearl into the tightest hug she could muster.
She had no idea how much she needed to hear that until she did.